During those days in February, 1909, he seemed as gay as a boy let out of school. He was making all the arrangements for his great African adventure. In fact, with his usual “preparedness,” he had been preparing for that event for a whole year. Everything was accurately arranged, and he and his son Kermit were to start immediately after he was to leave the White House in March. The lectures which he was to deliver a year from the following spring were all written and corrected. One afternoon in the “Blue Bedroom,” which I generally occupied on my visits, I heard a knock at my door, and he came in with several rolls of paper under his arm. “It is raining,” he said, “and I think I won’t take my ride. I want your opinion on the lectures I am to deliver at Oxford, in Berlin, and at the Sorbonne. I should like to read them to you,” and we settled down for a long delightful, quiet time “à deux.” As usual, he was more than willing to listen to any remark or criticism, and once or twice accepted my slight suggestions of what I thought could improve his articles. Some people felt that my brother was often egotistical, and mistook his conviction that this or that thing was right for an egotistical inability to look at it any other way. When he was convinced that his own attitude was correct, and that for the good of this or that scheme no other attitude should be taken, then nothing could swerve him; but when, as was often the case, it was not a question of conviction, but of advisability, he was the most open-minded of men, and gladly accepted and pondered the point of view of any one in whom he had confidence. I was always touched and gratified beyond measure at the simple and sometimes almost humble way in which he would listen to a difference of opinion upon my part. Occasionally, after thinking it seriously over, he would concede that my point of view was right. In this particular case, however, they were the slightest of slight suggestions which I made, for each of those articles seemed to me in its own way a masterpiece.