ciety
with him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emotions;
for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said he was, what were
they?

Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful politician, Thurlow Weed, and
our most able constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, and later our
most brilliant orator, Henry Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of
bringing the British people to their senses and correcting British
opinion, but all to little purpose. Gettysburg and Vicksburg did far
more toward modifying that opinion than the persuasiveness of Weed, the
logic of Evarts, or the eloquence of Beecher, and it took Chattanooga,
the March to the Sea, and Appomattox to dispel the illusion entirely.

Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the
English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this
country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German
Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have
had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years.
I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and
under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at
university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his
fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials,
his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than
all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the
castle and forest at Wilhelmshoehe. With all this experience, with all
this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to
recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the
British and American press of today.

In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is
not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and
endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a
leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw
him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was
very striking, and greatly in his favor.

In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and
highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also
very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more
than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes
astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest