He refused altogether to anticipate the possibility of his being sent to the Soudan, partly because he felt bound in honour to go to the Congo for the King of the Belgians, and partly because he had already had too many differences with the heads of departments under which he had served, and was regarded with too little favour, on account of his refusal to look at every question through official spectacles, to be a _persona grata_ to the English government. He was detained here a week, during which time we not only discussed fully the Egyptian and Soudanese questions, but talked over old times in China, when he gave me many graphic descriptions of incidents in his Chinese campaigns, which have probably never been heard of, and which I now regret I did not record. His modesty was such that I could only compel him to narrate his own adventures by a process of severe cross-examination. One of his marked peculiarities in conversation was his employment of phrases which he had himself coined to represent certain ideas. Thus he would say of a man: “So-and-so is a very good fellow, but he would never break his medal,” by which he meant that he was ambitious. Gordon himself, when the Emperor of China gave him, in return for his services, a very valuable gold medal, fearing that the sense of gratification he derived from it might prove a snare to him, broke it up and gave away the pieces. Hence the allusion. Again, he would say, if asked if he knew so-and-so. “I only met him once and then he rent me.” From which I understood that he had felt it his duty on that occasion to give the individual in question a word of good advice, and that the only thanks was that the man resented it, or, in Scripture phraseology, “turned again and rent him.” One day I observed him writing notes on a slip of paper. He asked me the Christian names of two friends who were staying with me. I told him, and feeling, I suppose, that my curiosity ought to be gratified, he said, “I am writing them down on my prayer list.”