Then, at some length, he related the circumstances which had induced him to take a warmer interest in me. He had often thought of the start I had given him by the question, ‘Do you want a boy, sir?’ It seemed to voice his own life-long wish. But he thought I was too big for his purpose. For the sake, however, of the long-desired child, he determined to do the best he could for me, and had obtained my engagement with his friend Speake. When he had gone home, his wife had been much interested in the adventure with me, and had often asked how his ‘protégé’ was getting on? When she had, finally, seen me, she had said something to him which had given a new turn to his thoughts; but, as I was already established, and was likely to succeed, he had ceased thinking about it. On Margaret’s arrival at St. Louis with his wife’s remains, she had been so eloquent in all the details of what had occurred, that he inwardly resolved that his first object on reaching the city should be to seek me and undertake what God had pointed out to him; namely, to educate me for the business of life, and be to me what my father should have been. ‘The long and the short of it is,’ said he, ‘as you are wholly unclaimed, without a parent, relation, or sponsor, I promise to take you for my son, and fit you for a mercantile career; and, in future, _you are to bear my name, “Henry Stanley.”_’ Having said which, he rose, and, dipping his hands in a basin of water, he made the sign of the cross on my forehead, and went seriously through the formula of baptism, ending with a brief exhortation to bear my new name worthily.