Today we are laboring under a no less singular illusion than were the English in 1862. The conception prevailing in England and in this country concerning the physical, mental, and moral make-up of the German Emperor is the monumental caricature of biographical literature. I have had the privilege of his personal acquaintance now for nearly ten years. I have been brought into contact with him in many different ways and under many varying conditions, at Court and State functions, at university ceremonies and celebrations, at his table, and by his fireside surrounded by his family, when in the midst of his officials, his men of science, and his personal friends, and, more instructive than all, alone in the imperial home in Berlin and at Potsdam and in the castle and forest at Wilhelmshoehe. With all this experience, with all this opportunity for observation at close range, I am hardly able to recognize a single characteristic usually attributed to him by the British and American press of today. In the first place, the Emperor is an impressive man physically. He is not a giant in stature, but a man of medium size, great strength and endurance, and of agile and graceful movement. He looks every inch a leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are peculiarly fascinating. I saw him once seated beside his uncle, King Edward VII., and the contrast was very striking, and greatly in his favor. In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg, near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture, invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as from the German Emperor. And yet, with all this real superiority of mind and education, his deference to the opinions of others is remarkable. Arrogance is one of the qualities most often attributed to him, but he is the only ruler I ever saw in whom there appeared to be absolutely no arrogance. He meets you as man meets man and makes you feel that you are required to yield to nothing but the better reason. A Man of Warm Affections.