about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and going
forth in a high sea to make a call. I confessed to being an ancient
Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation
of the deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of
a bird--a feathered ruffian that ought to be shot.

The Admiral would be picked out by close attention as the origin of
some millions of pictures; but he is unlike as well as like them. Even
the best photographs do not do justice to his fine eyes, large, dark
and luminous, or to the solid mass of his head with iron-brown hair
tinged with gray. He is a larger man than the portraits indicate;
and his figure, while that of a strong man in good health and form and
well nourished, is not stout and, though full, is firm; and his step
has elasticity in it. His clean-shaven cheek and chin are massive, and
drawn on fine lines full of character--no fatty obscuration, no decline
of power; a stern but sunny and cloudless face--a good one for a place
in history; no show of indulgence, no wrinkles; not the pallor of
marble, rather the glint of bronze--the unabated force good for other
chapters of history. It would be extremely interesting to report the
talk of the Admiral; but there were two things about him that reminded
me of James G. Blaine, something of the vivid personality of the loved
and lost leader; something in his eye and his manner, more in the
startling candor with which he spoke of things it would be premature
to give the world, and, above all, the absence of all alarm about
being reported--the unconscious consciousness that one must know this
was private and no caution needed. A verbatim report of the Admiral
would, however, harm no one, signify high-toned candor and a certain
breezy simplicity in the treatment of momentous matters. Evidently
here was a man not posing, a hero because his character was heroic, a
genuine personage--not artificial, proclamatory, a picker of phrases,