moment.

His pride in the library was evident, and the fondness with which he
brought forth the books was the fondness of an honest enthusiast.

"Some people don't consider Longfellow a great poet, but I do," he said,
as he showed a little volume of the poet's works. "Lowell is represented
here, but I think, toward the end of his life, he became too much
Bostonian. The best American," he said later, "is a Bostonian who has
lived ten years west of the Mississippi."

He then showed us his work-box, a compact leather case containing pads
of paper, pens, lead pencils, and other requirements of the writer. I
did not see a type-writing machine such as we cartoonists have so often
represented in our cartoons of Mr. Roosevelt in Africa. But, then,
cartoonists are not always strictly accurate.

Later on he spoke of the lectures he was to deliver in Berlin, at the
Sorbonne in Paris, and in Oxford the following spring. I told him how
surprised I had been to hear that he had prepared these lectures during
the rush of the last few weeks of his administration. He said that he
probably would be regarded as a representative American in those
lectures and that he wanted to do them just as well as he possibly
could. He knew that there would be no time nor library references in
Africa, and so he had prepared them in Washington before leaving
America.

In regard to his future movements he seemed sorry that he was obliged to
take the Nile trip, and that he was only doing it as a matter of
business--that he had to get a white rhino, which is found only along
certain parts of the Nile.

"Going back by the Nile is a long and hard trip. For the first twelve
days we will not fire a shot, probably. It will mean getting started
every morning at three o'clock, marching until ten, then sweating under
mosquito bars during the heat of the day, with spirillum ticks,
sleeping-sickness flies, and all sorts of pests to bother one; then long
days on the Nile, with nothing to see but papyrus reeds on each side."

And speaking of "rhinos" suggests a little incident that the colonel
told and which he considers amusing.

"One day one of the party was stalking a buffalo, when a rhino suddenly
appeared some distance away and threatened to charge or do something
that would alarm the buffalo and scare it away. So they told me to hurry
down and shoo the rhino off while they finished their stalk and got the
buffalo. So, you see, there's an occupation. That