Six lectures (17, 1314, 1824, 1853, 1857, 2197), and it is the origin of everything else in the corpus, told as a worked example of his own method rather than as reminiscence. Out of work in the Depression, he rented a room at Steinway Hall for five dollars that seated about seventy, and sent out fifty penny postal cards — the large amount of fifty cents worth. Six came, all from the theatrical world, and they came through sympathy, almost to pay their respects; seeing only six in a room built for fifty they were embarrassed out of a dollar each, because he did not charge and did not have the courage to charge, and the basket paid the rent. Six months later he had grown to twenty, and a man in the same building with an audience of six hundred invited him to take the platform for twenty-five dollars on his off night. Neville learned afterwards what it was for: so that facing six hundred he would be so nervous they would see he was not worth visiting, and be rubbed out completely. The next night two hundred of the six hundred came downstairs, then more, until they were standing in the hallway and the management said it must rent him a bigger place; it overflowed again, and again, until they had to leave Steinway Hall. His reading is the point of telling it: he could never have devised the means, the rival was used by his imagination without consent, and the whole thing began with going to bed assuming a virtue he did not possess. 1853 sets his son at the door on that first night; 1857 gives the rent, the seating and the Depression. CORRECTION, 2026-09-20. The first version of this record named three lectures (1824, 1853, 1857). The attach lane (508) found three more and they are the valuable ones, because two of them predate the settled telling. 17 carries an EARLY version — three dollars for the hall rather than five, and the rival named as a man with about five hundred in the same building, with the whole episode read through Joseph’s line, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good. 1314 has the money detail the later tellings drop: a BORROWED five dollar bill, and six came. 2197 reduces it to one clause — my first night, I think six people came — which is how the story survives once it has become shorthand. The count was mine and it was wrong; six is the lane’s and it is checked.