Along with the developing effect of the experience, comes the solitary communing with Nature, which brings a spiritual exaltation. Then follows the companionship with Livingstone, a man of heroic and ideal traits, uniquely educated by the African wilds; these two learn to know each other by the searching test of hourly companionship, amid savages, perils, perplexities, days of adventure, nights of intimate converse; Stanley’s deepest feelings finding worthy object and full response in the man he had rescued, and suggestions of spiritual and material resources in the unknown continent, destined to germinate and bear fruit;--all this his first African exploration brought to Stanley. His return to civilisation was not altogether a genial home-coming. In a way, he had been more at home in Africa than he found himself in England. There his companionship had been with Nature, with Livingstone, with his own spirit; the difficulties and dangers confronting him had been a challenge to which his full powers made response; and ‘the free hand,’ so dear to a strong man, had been his. Now he was plunged into a highly-artificial society; its trappings and paraphernalia, its formal dinners, and ceremonies, were distasteful to him; above all, he was thrust into a prominence which brought far more pain than pleasure. A flood of importunate, or inquisitive, letters from strangers poured in on him; he notes that in one morning he has received twenty-eight. Relatives and acquaintances of his early years became suddenly affectionate and acquisitive; greedy claims were made on his purse, which he would not wholly reject. Worst of all, with the acclamations of the public which greeted him, were mingled expressions of doubt or disbelief, innuendoes, sneers! Men, and journals, of high standing, were among the sceptics. Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Royal Geographical Society, wrote to the ‘Times’ that it was not true that Stanley had discovered Livingstone, but that Livingstone had discovered Stanley! The silly quip had currency long after Sir Henry Rawlinson had changed his tone, and the Society had passed a vote of thanks to Stanley. The ‘Standard,’ in oracular tones, called for the sifting of the discoverer’s story by experts; it ‘could not resist some suspicions and misgivings’; it found ‘something inexplicable and mysterious’ in the business! There were those who publicly questioned the authenticity of letters which, at Stanley’s suggestion, Livingstone had written to the ‘Herald.’