This is a bit off the Twain / Nast topic, but Nast did make some
successful tours. His first began in October 1873 and he ended up
making a $40,000 profit on it, making him a wealthy man. That $40,000
from 1873 would be worth $616,350 in today's currency. Nast's tours are
discussed in Paine's biography of Nast, in chapters 31-32 and 58.

In these tours, Nast drew cartoons while he was talking. That technique,
which became known as giving "chalk talks," was later picked up by
other cartoonists and by the early 1900s many popular newspaper
cartoonists had lucrative side businesses making chalk talk tours. In a
1922 book on Chalk Talk and Crayon Presentation, Charles L.
Bartholomew, who many probably know as "Bart" of the Minneapolis
Journal, wrote that "Achievement in chalk talk began in America with
Thomas Nast, in the United States, and J. W. Bengough in Canada. The
chalk talks given by them were the big picture shows [movies] of their
day and they played to packed houses." In his own book about chalk
talks, Bengough cites Nast's success as the inspiration for his first tours.
Nast was not only successful with his lectures but pioneered a new form
of illustrated entertainment that was very popular through at least the
late 1920s and is still practiced today.

Bart was one of the most popular and influential cartoonists of the 1890s
and early 1900s. He drew "Can the Missionary Reach This Old
Savage?" the March 1901 cartoon of Mark Twain as a grass-skirted
savage confronted by a missionary demanding a retraction of his
comments about missionaries in China in "To the Person Sitting in
Darkness."

Jim Zwick