Hevirw iil Rrtlif«». iOfJiH 



MR. FRANK T. BULLEN. 



Mr. Frank T. Bullen, 

 The taiiiouH Autlior and Lecturer, now visitinir Aubtrulnsiii. 



The long interval that has tlapsed since the visit 

 of Mark Twain, the last celebrity to make a lecture 

 tour through Australia and New Zealand, will be 

 broken by Mr. Frank T. Bullen. the popular author 

 of the " Cruise of the Cachalot." Few English men 

 of letters at the present time are as well equipped 

 as Mr. Bullen to win success on the lecture platform. 

 In the first place he has an unusually interesting 

 and sympathetic personality, and a history that 

 kindles at once our admiration and our wonder. 

 Further, he pos.sesses a rare gift of dramatic narra- 

 tive. No better authority in such a matter can be 

 wished than the Spcctatm: Writing of Mr. Bullen's 

 works, the great English weekly says: — 



" His stories of adventure in the great deep, of 

 Titanic combats between cachalot and octopus, of 

 ■ threshers ' and killer-whales, are just about as good 

 reading as one can find. He has seen strange things, 

 exciting things, and he makes us see them and thrill 



with them. But literatur ■ is something more than that, 

 and Mr. Bullen's best work is literature. If the 

 ordinary comi>etent journalist had been m at the 

 death of a whale, much more if he had seen the 

 more impressive slaughter by the ' threshers,' he 

 could not have helped writing something about it 

 that w'ould have been excellent to read. But Mr. 

 Bullen can make you feel the romance of the sea 

 itself ; its effect on the mind of an imaginative man ; 

 and its grim tragedy, too, the wrestle with two 

 thousand square yards of thrashing canvas in a 

 gale, and the faint cry as a life drops overboar<l 

 from the masthead into the \easty smother, lost 

 beyond hope of recovery." 



But, most important qualification of all, Mr. 

 Bullen can relate his illustrated story of hair- 

 breadth 'scapes and moving incidents in the great 

 deep with excellent effect. His lectures are won 

 derfully fresh and graphic, full of sea spume and 

 the marvels of the mighty ocean. It is not surpris- 

 ing, consequently, to learn that '" the prose poet of 

 the sea '" has made himsL-lf one of the most en- 

 gaging and most engaged lecturers in England. A& 

 a matter of fact, six years have passed since it was 

 first announced that the author of the " Cruise of 

 the Cachalot " would visit Australia on a lecture 

 tour, but year after year, so numerous were his 

 English " bookings," ^Ir. Bullen has been unable to 

 fulfil his promise to Mr. R. S. Sniythe, who will 

 pilot the lecture cruise in this hemisphere. As it is, 

 the preseiU tour is onlv made possible by Mr. 

 Bullen utilising his usual holiday months to renew 

 an old acquaintance with the island continent and 

 the " fortunate isles " as Mr. Bullen, in a London 

 interview, happily describes the country governed by 

 the Right Hon. Richard Seddon. 



On this page appears a portrait of Mr. Bullen, 

 who is a man of middle height and spare figure, 

 suggesting, as an English paper puts it, '' frailty of 

 muscle and strength of will, " with a complexion 

 brown as that of a Spaniard. But the physical 

 appearance of the man is deceptive, for Mr. Bullen 

 is as tough as he is wiry. He hardly knows what 

 fatigue is, and he is quite insensible to climatic 

 changes. Even in the rigour of an English winter 

 he regards an overcoat much as Falstaff regarded a 

 second shirt, " for superfluity." Mr. Bullen is a 

 ceaseless worker, and, as was said of M. Claretie, 

 the doyen of French journalists, "' It is difficult to say 

 where he does not \vrite, and it is hard to say where 

 he does not write well." 



Mr. Bullen will open his .\ustralian campaign in. 

 the .-Vdelaide Town Hall. 



