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 detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement.  I remember a half hour’s conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg, near Homburg.  He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the arts of peace.  I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture, invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and conversation.  I have had the privilege of association with many highly intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as from the German Emperor.  And yet, with all this real superiority of mind and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable.  Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no arrogance.  He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are required to yield to nothing but the better reason.

A Man of Warm Affections.

In the third place, the Emperor impressed me as a man of heart, of warm affections, and of great consideration for the feelings and well-being of others.  He can not, at least does not, conceal his reverence for, and devotion to, the Empress, or his love for his children, or his attachment to his friends.  He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of the Empress Friedrich with the greatest veneration, and once when speaking to me of an old American friend who had turned upon him he said that it was difficult for him to give up an old friend, right or wrong, and impossible when he believed him to be in the right.  His manifest respect and affection for his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus and zu Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler and Althoff, give strong evidence of the warmth and depth of his nature.  His consideration for Americans, especially, has always been remarkable.  It was at his suggestion that the exchange of educators between the universities of Germany and of the United