There was a very great scientist (he is a very great friend of mine and he discovered something I can’t remember the name of) who said: “A man must be mad to think of flying machines!” and he lived to see them as plentiful as sparrows. Without saying a word to me or even letting me know, in a few hasty hours Stead wrote in the “Review of Reviews” in February, 1910, the most extraordinarily accurate _résumé_ of every date and name connected with my career. It would have taken any other man a month. However, he made one great mistake in it. He only spoke in it, like all other things that have been said of me, of “The full corn in the ear!” What really is a man’s life is the endurance and the adversity and the non-recognition and the humiliating slights and the fighting morning, noon and night, of early life. That brings fortune. I like that word “fortune.” Those inspired men who translated the Great Bible never said a thing “happened,” they always said it “fortuned.” I here insert a letter kindly lent me by Lord Esher. As it was written on the spur of the moment and out of the abundance of the heart, I give it verbatim. Esher loved Stead as much as I did. I knew it, and that’s why I wrote to him. We felt a common affliction:-- _April 22, 1912._ HOTEL EXCELSIOR, NAPLES. This loss of dear old Stead numbs me! Cromwell and Martin Luther rolled into one. And such a big heart. Such great emotions. You must write something. _All I’ve read quite inadequate._ The telegrams here say he was to the forefront with the women and children, putting them in the boats! _I can see him!_ and probably singing “Hallelujah,” and encouraging the ship’s band to play cheerfully. He told me he would die in his boots. So he has. _And a fine death._ As a boy he had threepence a week pocket money. One penny bought Shakespeare in weekly parts, the other two pennies to his God for Missions. And the result was he became editor of a big newspaper at 22! And he was a Missionary himself all his life. Fearless even when alone, believing in his God--the God of truth--and his enemies always rued it when they fought him. He was an exploder of “gas-bags” and the terror of liars. He was called a “wild man” because he said “Two keels to one.” He was at Berlin--the High Personage said to him: “Don’t be frightened!” Stead replied to the All Highest: “Oh, no! we won’t! _for every Dreadnought you build we will build two!_” _That_ was the genesis of the cry “Two keels to one.” I have a note of it made at the time for my “Reflections.” But, my dear friend, put your concise pen to paper for our Cromwellian Saint. He deserves it. Yours always, FISHER.