pencil. It was a copy of the letter that Stanley had written to the great explorer the very day after he left him. It has sometimes been questioned whether Livingstone really made on Stanley the impression which Stanley describes in his autobiography. There have been those who said that that picture was but the reading back over the intervening years of a growing hero worship. But here is the letter which Stanley wrote as he came fresh from the old missionary's companionship and the inspiration of his personality:
"My dear Doctor:
"I have parted from you all too soon; I feel it deeply; I am entirely conscious of it from being so depressed. . . . In writing to you, I am not writing to an idea now, but to an embodiment of warm, good fellowship, of everything that is noble and right, of sound common sense, of everything practical and right-minded.
"I have talked with you; your presence is almost palpable, though you are absent. . . .
"It seems as if I had left a community of friends and relations. The utter loneliness of myself, the void that has been created, the pang at parting, the bleak aspect of the future, is the same as I have felt before, when parting from dear friends.
"Why should people be subjected to these partings, with the several sorrows and pangs that surely follow them?—It is a consolation, however, after tearing myself away, that I am about to do you a service, for then I have not quite parted from you; you and I are not quite separate. Though I am not present to you bodily, you must
