The old journalist describes her in a way which gives a far from pleasant impression of the Empress towards the end of her life. He was presented to her by the then Prince of Wales at Homburg, and the first thing he noticed was that, though she was very like Queen Victoria, her manner was less simple and therefore had less authority. He also criticises her dress, and observes that both the late Queen and her eldest daughter "showed an indifference to the art of personal adornment." Mr. Smalley admits that the Empress has a much greater vivacity than the Queen, but he thinks that this vivacity becomes restless, and that her mind can never be in repose. He says drily that, from her marriage and down to the day of the Emperor Frederick's death, she had lived in a dream-world of her own creation, her belief being so strong, her conviction that she knew what was best for those about her so complete, that the facts had to adjust themselves as best they could to that belief and that conviction. As was the Empress's way when a stranger, and especially a foreigner, was presented to her, she at once began to talk of Mr. Smalley's country and of what she supposed would interest him. Instead of allowing him to say what he thought, she plunged directly into American topics, especially commenting on what she supposed to be the position of women in the United States. It soon became clear, or so he thought, that she had a correspondent in Chicago from whom she had derived her impressions. "She talked with clearness, with energy and almost apostolic fervour, the voice penetrating rather than melodious." Mr. Smalley said to himself that all that she asserted might be true of Chicago, but of what else was it true? And he was evidently much nettled that she generalised from the "Windy City" to the rest of the United States. Instead of seeing, as probably most women would have seen, that she was speaking to an auditor who was fast becoming prejudiced, the Empress continued to unburden herself in the frankest, freest way to this journalist whom she had never met before. She even seems to have touched on politics, on Anglo-German relations, on the internal affairs of Germany: "Never for a moment did this dreamer's talk stop or grow sluggish. Carlyle summed up Macaulay in the phrase 'Flow on, thou shining river'; he might in a sardonic mood have done the same to this Princess." It was an illuminating interview, declares Mr. Smalley, throwing light on events to come as well as on those of the past, and he goes on to explain that multitudes of Germans shared Bismarck's distrust of the Crown Princess, and believed that she wanted to Anglicise Germany. He reiterates what has so often been said--that she told all-comers that what Germany needed was Parliamentary government as it was understood and practised in England. In little things as in great she made no secret for her preference for what was English over what was German: