Both remarkable men, very remarkable men, and utterly dissimilar in character as in physiognomy; each admiring the other in a perfectly delightful way. Roosevelt writes a hand like a schoolboy’s, and, with all his business rush and appetite for work, it somehow seemed to me that he would love quiet sentimental songs and pretty poems. No doubt there may be more clever men in America, more learned men, more suave and polished diplomatists, but this man is a judicious mixture that makes him great. In truth he is a gigantic personality. He is not in the least American except in his unrestrained enthusiasm and rough exterior. He gesticulates like a foreigner, his mind works quickly. Withal he was the right man in the right place, and the United States had every cause to be proud of him. Once more I met, or rather saw and heard, America’s greatest living President. But how this chanced was at a sad time for our country. As told elsewhere, I was doing a cure at Woodhall Spa at the time of King Edward VII.’s death. It happened that on my return to town I tumbled across my old friend the late Sir Joseph Dimsdale, in the railway dining-car, when the conversation turned on Mr. Roosevelt and his visit to England. I regretted the circumstances that had saddened his reception; also that he should see nothing of our Court and alas! of the Monarch whom he had so much admired. And then we talked of the Freedom of the City, which was to be conferred on the ex-President in a few days’ time. “Although my Cambridge boy was made a Freeman of the City of London the other day, I have never witnessed the ceremony,” I said. “Would you like to see one of these public ones?” asked the ex-Lord Mayor. “Immensely,” I replied. “If it is possible to manage it, you shall have a seat,” he replied, and accordingly I was invited to see Mr. Roosevelt made free of the Ancient City of London, and enjoyed the privilege of hearing one of the most memorable speeches ever made within the Guildhall walls: certainly one of the most abused, admired, discussed. Was Roosevelt playing to the gallery? Was he angling for the Presidency of the United States? Or was he really trying to do England a good turn in correcting her stupidity in Egypt? Anyway, it was a bold stroke, but done so skilfully that it did not seem so rude as it looked in cold print. I had been much struck with Roosevelt’s personality when I spent that hour _tête-à-tête_ with him in Washington—his rough-and-ready manner, his fearless, overflowing geniality—but I had never heard him speak in public. The giving of the Freedom of the City of London is a great event, very old, very historic, very interesting, surrounded by ancient ritual.