Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/218

 as a description of the social and political life of Russia just prior to the great upheaval which destroyed the system it describes.

Teignmouth Shore had a good deal to do also with another book on Russia, Colonel Burnaby's "Ride to Khiva," as he records in his "Recollections." "I was dining one evening," he writes, "at Albany Street Barracks with my friend Captain Fred Burnaby, of the Royal Horse Guards. He had just returned from an adventurous tour in Russia, which afterwards became famous as 'A Ride to Khiva.' He told me some of the incidents of it, and I suggested that he should write a full account of his adventures. His only objection was that he was not an author. I begged him not to aim at authorship as if it were some sort of profession, but just write down, in the simple way in which he had repeated it to me, a description of his tour; and I offered to guarantee his work being accepted by Cassell's. He did so, and it proved one of the popular and successful books of the day." It was published in 1876 at a guinea, ran through seven "editions" in twelve months, and has been on sale at various prices ever since. There is still a demand for the adventurous recital. Yet another book which made a good deal of stir at the time of its appearance was W. T. Stead's "Truth about Russia." That so enthusiastic a democrat should play the part of interpreter of the Autocrat of All the Russias to the Western world was a circumstance of some piquancy, which, added to a fervid and picturesque style, gave the book considerable vogue.

Of the thousands of articles about travel in different parts of the world which have flowed from Sir John Foster Fraser's graphic pen, the first was published in one of Cassell's periodicals. After he had been vagabonding along the shores of the Mediterranean for six months, some twenty years ago, he returned to England with a bag full of articles and photographs. At once he started "pitching them at the heads of editors of magazines,"