reaches a capital sermon;
he is an accomplished binder of books; he is a successful and
enthusiastic farmer, and he is frankly audacious in his loves and
hatreds, his ambitions and his beliefs. He has, in short, no vermin
blood in him at any rate. If you do not like him, you know why; and if
you do, you know why as easily. He even knows what he believes about
woman's suffrage and about God, a rare conciseness of thinking in
these troublous times.

There stands before you a man apparently as sound in mind and in body
as any man who treads German soil; a man of great vivacity of mind and
manner, and of wholesome delight in living; who bears huge
responsibilities with good humor, and that most unwholesome of all
things, undisputed power, with humility. At a banquet in Brandenburg
the 5th of March, 1890, speaking of his many voyages, he said: "He
who, alone at sea, standing on the bridge, with nothing over him but
God's heaven, has communed with himself will not mistake the value of
such voyages. I could wish for many of my countrymen that they might
live through similar hours of self-contemplation, where a man takes
stock of what he has tried to do, and of what he has accomplished.
Then it is that a man is cured of vanity, and we have all of us need
of that."

It is obvious that a man cannot be modest, as the above quotation
would indicate, and at the same time preening with vanity; a Sir
Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless, dashing cavalry officer
or proud Prussian squire, and at the same time a wary and astute
insurance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty and honor, and
belief in God, and at the same time a political comedian deceiving his
rivals abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects at home.

Not a few men, even of slight powers of observation and of meagre
experience, have noted the strange fact that a blank and direct
statement of the truth is very apt to be put down as a lie; and that a
man who frankly expresses his beliefs and ambitions, and openly goes
about his business and his pleasures with no thought of concealment,
is often regarded as Machiavellian and deceitful, because a timid and
cautious world finds it hard to believe that he is really as audacious
as he appears.

Even those with the most limited list, of the great names of history
at their disposal, cannot fail to remember that simplicity and
directness have in the persons of their highest exemplars been
misunderstood; hunted down like