President Roosevelt – Lord Balfour – Mr. Asquith – Lord Haldane – George Meredith – Rudyard Kipling – James Barrie – Henry Irving – Bernard Shaw – R.L.S. – Grant Allen – James Payn – Henry Thompson – Royalty.

When i have chanced during my life to come in contact with notable people, I have often made some short record at the time of what they said and how they impressed me. It is difficult, however, to use these notes for publication when you happen to have been a guest, and it can only be done, I think, by using one's judgment and never consciously harming one's host. If everyone were altogether silent upon such occasions the most pleasing side of great contemporaries would never be chronicled, for the statesman in slippers is a very much more human and lovable person than the politician on the platform.

Among the great men that I have known President Roosevelt occupied a prominent place. He was not a big, nor, so far as one could see, a powerful man, but he had tremendous dynamic force and an iron will which may account for his reputation as an athlete. He had all the simplicity of real greatness, speaking his mind with great frankness and in the clearest possible English. He had in him a great deal of the boy, a mischievous, adventurous, high-spirited boy, with a deep, strong, thoughtful manhood in the background. We were present, my wife and I, at the Guildhall when he made his memorable speech about Egypt, in which he informed a gathering, which contained the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and many of our Cabinet, that we should either rule more strictly or clear out altogether.