that rate–must have numbered one hundred to two hundred sittings. Out
of all those there ought to be some good photographs. This is the best I
have had, and I am glad to have your honored names on it. I did not know
Harold Frederic personally, but I have heard a great deal about him, and
nothing that was not pleasant and nothing except such things as lead a
man to honor another man and to love him. I consider that it is a
misfortune of mine that I have never had the luck to meet him, and if any
book of mine read to him in his last hours made those hours easier for
him and more comfortable, I am very glad and proud of that. I call to
mind such a case many years ago of an English authoress, well known in
her day, who wrote such beautiful child tales, touching and lovely in
every possible way. In a little biographical sketch of her I found that
her last hours were spent partly in reading a book of mine, until she was
no longer able to read. That has always remained in my mind, and I have
always cherished it as one of the good things of my life. I had read
what she had written, and had loved her for what she had done.
Stanley apparently carried a book of mine feloniously away to Africa,
and I have not a doubt that it had a noble and uplifting influence there
in the wilds of Africa–because on his previous journeys he never carried
anything to read except Shakespeare and the Bible. I did not know of
that circumstance. I did not know that he had carried a book of mine.
I only noticed that when he came back he was a reformed man. I knew
Stanley very well in those old days. Stanley was the first man who ever
reported a lecture of mine, and that was in St. Louis. When I was down
there the next time to give the same lecture I was told to give them
something fresh, as they had read that in the papers. I met Stanley here
when he came back from that first expedition of his which closed with the
finding of Livingstone. You remember how he would break out at the
meetings of the British Association, and find fault with what people
said, because Stanley had notions of his own, and could not contain them.
They had to come out or break him up–and so he would go round and
address geographical societies. He was always on the warpath in those
days, and people always had to have Stanley contradicting their geography
for them and improving it. But he always came back and sat drinking beer
with me in the hotel up to two in the morning, and he was then one of the
most civilized human beings that ever was.
I saw in a newspaper this evening a reference to an interview which
appeared in one of the papers the other day, in which the interviewer
said that I characterized Mr. Birrell’s speech the other day at the
Pilgrims’ Club as “bully.” Now, if you will excuse me, I never use slang
to an interviewer or anybody else. That distresses me. Whatever I said
about Mr. Birrell’s speech was said in English, as good English as
anybody uses. If I could not describe Mr. Birrell’s delightful speech
without using slang I would not describe it at all. I would close my
mouth and keep it closed, much as it would discomfort me.
Now that comes of interviewing a man in the first person, which is an
altogether wrong way to interview him. It is entirely wrong because none
of you, I, or anybody else, could interview a man–could listen to a man
talking any length of time and then go off and reproduce that talk in the
first person. It can’t be done. What results is merely that the
interviewer gives the substance of what is said and puts it in his own
language and puts it in your mouth. It will always be either better
language than you use or worse, and in my case it is always worse.