It was the picture of a well-known actress.

He then recalled an advertisement announcing that this particular brand of cigarettes contained, in each package, a lithographed portrait of some famous actor or actress, and that if the purchaser would collect these he would, in the end, have a valuable album of the greatest actors and actresses of the day.

Edward turned the picture over, only to find a blank reverse side.

"All very well," he thought, "but what does a purchaser have, after all, in the end, but a lot of pictures?
Why don't they use the back of each picture, and tell what each did: a little biography?
Then it would be worth keeping." With his passion for self-education, the idea appealed very strongly to him; and believing firmly that there were others possessed of the same thirst, he set out the next day, in his luncheon hour, to find out who made the picture.
At the office of the cigarette company he learned that the making of the pictures was in the hands of the Knapp Lithographic Company.

The following luncheon hour, Edward sought the offices of the company, and explained his idea to Mr.Joseph P.Knapp, now the president of the American Lithograph Company.
"I'll give you ten dollars apiece if you will write me a one-hundred-word biography of one hundred famous Americans," was Mr.
Knapp's instant reply.