472 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



hero's; and, to make another comparison, I can liken his detractors in 

 England and Germany only to the suitors who took advantage of Ulysses's 

 absence to slander him, and torment his wife. The man lives not who is 

 more single-minded than Livingstone — who has worked harder, been more 

 persevering in so good a cause as Livingstone — and the man lives not who 

 deserves a higher reward. 



" Before going to Central Africa in search of Livingstone, I believed 

 almost everything I heard or read about him. Never was a man more 

 gullible than I. I believed it possible that the facetious gentleman's story, 

 who said that Livingstone had married an African princess, might be correct. 

 I believed, or was near believing, the gentleman who told me personally that 

 Livingstone was a narrow-minded, crabbed soul, with whom no man could 

 travel in peace ; that Livingstone kept no journals or notes ; and that if he 

 died his discoveries would surely be lost to the world. I believed then with 

 the gentleman that Livingstone ought to have come home and let a younger 

 man — that same gentleman, for instance — go and finish the work that Living- 

 stone had begun. Also, inconsistent as it may seem — but I warn you again 

 that I was exceedingly gullible — I believed that this man Livingstone was 

 aided in a most energetic manner, that he had his letters from his children 

 and friends sent to him regularly, and that stores were sent to him monthly 

 and quarterly — in fact, that he was quite comfortably established and settled 

 at Ujiji. I believed also that every man, woman, and child in England 

 admired and loved this man exceedingly. I was deeply impressed with these 

 views of things when James Gordon Bennet, jun., of the New York Herald, 

 told me, in a few words, to go after Livingstone, to find him, and bring what 

 news I could of him. I simply replied with a few monosyllables in the 

 .affirmative, though I thought it might form a very hard task. What, if 

 Livingstone refused to see me or hear me ? ' No matter,' said I to myself in 

 my innocence, ' I shall be successful if I only see him.' You yourselves, 

 gentlemen, know how I would stand to-day if I had come back from the 

 Tanganyika without a word from him; some, but few, believed me, when 

 Livingstone's own letters appeared. But how fallacious were all my beliefs! 

 Now that I know the virtue and uprightness of the man, I wonder how it was 

 possible that I could believe that Livingstone was married to an African 

 princess and had settled down. I feel ashamed that I entertained such 

 thoughts of him. Now that I know Livingstone's excessive amiability, his 

 mild temper, the love he entertains for his fellow-men, white or black, his 

 pure Christian character, I wonder now why this man was maligned. I 

 wonder now whether Livingstone is the same man whom a former fellow- 

 traveller of his called a tyrant and an unbearable companion. I wonder now 

 whether this is the traveller whom I believed to be decrepid and too old to 

 follow up his discoveries, whom a younger man ought to displace, now that I 



