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.  I have a great respect for the English language.  I am one of its supporters, its promoters, its elevators.  I don’t degrade it.  A slip of the tongue would be the most that you would get from me.  I have always tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.  I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I feel, or what I don’t feel and what I don’t think.