One trivial incident there was in our walk which gave us some amusement.  We were going by footpaths down a river valley, a very beautiful, but a very tame and settled country, where anything like an adventure seemed impossible.  We were on a path which I had known for many years, and along which I had walked many times, not only without adventure, but without even incident.  Suddenly we found ourselves stopped—­the path was flooded, some weeds had blocked the river close by, and instead of a dry path we had about twenty yards of water in front of us.  The water was not very deep, certainly not above our knees, but I had not intended that there should be any wading in our walk nor had I prepared for it.  I asked if he would mind going through the water, to which, of course, he replied that he would not.  So we went through, got wet, and in the course of the afternoon got dry again as we walked.  Nothing of the same kind had happened there before; nothing has happened since.  I think there was some magnetism about Colonel Roosevelt’s personality which created incidents.

After going a few miles down the valley we got into our motor, which was waiting at a village inn, and drove to what is called the New Forest, though it is more than eight hundred years old.  We were now in a country of wild heath, quite uncultivated, and the part we went through was mostly natural forest.  Here we heard some birds different from any we had heard in the valley of the Itchen, and got to a little inn standing on the open heath about nine o’clock in the evening.  We had dinner, and next morning we breakfasted together and went to Southampton, whence Colonel Roosevelt returned to America.

I am not attempting here a full appreciation of Colonel Roosevelt.  He will be known for all time as one of the great men of America.  I am only giving you this personal recollection as a little contribution to his memory, as one that I can make from personal knowledge and which is now known only to myself.  His conversation about birds was made interesting by quotations from poets.  He talked also about politics, and in the whole of his conversation about them there was nothing but the motive of public spirit and patriotism.  I saw enough of him to know that to be with him was to be stimulated in the best sense of the word for the work of life.  Perhaps it is not yet realised how great he was in the matter of knowledge as well as in action.  Everybody knows that he was a great man of action in the fullest sense of the word.  The Press has always proclaimed that.  It is less often that a tribute is paid to him as a man of knowledge as well as a man of action.  Two of your greatest experts in natural history told me the other day that Colonel Roosevelt could, in that department of knowledge, hold his own with experts.  His knowledge of literature was also very great, and it was knowledge of the best.  It is seldom that you find so great a man of action who was also a man