So the fair Greek disappears; and Stanley, free and heart-whole, is whirled away again by the ‘Herald’s’ swift and changing summons: to Athens, to witness a Royal Baptism, and describe the temples and ruins, with which he was enraptured; to Smyrna, Rhodes, Beyrout, and Alexandria; thence to Spain, where great events seemed impending. But he has barely interviewed General Prim, when he is ordered to London; there the ‘Herald’s’ agent, Colonel Finlay Anderson, gives him a surprising commission. It is vaguely reported that Dr. Livingstone is on his way homeward from Africa. On the chance of meeting him, and getting the first intelligence, Stanley is to go to Aden, and use his discretion as to going to Zanzibar. It looks like a wild-goose chase, but his, ‘not to make reply; his, not to reason why’; and he is off to Aden, which he reaches November 21, 1868. Not a word can he learn of Livingstone. He writes enquiries to Consul Webb at Zanzibar, and, in the wretched and sun-scorched little town, sets himself to wait; but not in idleness. He works the Magdala campaign into book-form, designing in some indefinite future to publish it. (It came out five years later.) Then he falls upon ‘a pile of good books which my interesting visit to Greece and Asia Minor induced me to purchase--Josephus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Derby’s “Iliad,” Dryden’s “Virgil,” some few select classics of Bohn’s Library, Wilkinson’s and Lane’s books on “Egypt,” hand-books to Greece, the Levant, and India, Kilpert’s maps of Asia Minor, etc. Worse heat, worse dust, and still no word of Livingstone!’ * * * * * New Year’s Day, 1869. Many people have greeted me, and expressed their wish that it should be a happy one, and that I should see many more such days. They were no doubt sincere, but what avail their wishes, and what is happiness? What a curious custom it is, to take this day, above all others, to speak of happiness, when inwardly each must think in his soul that it admonishes him of the lapse of time, and what enormous arrears there still remain to make up the sum of his happiness!