We sailed just as the White Star boat cleared the end of the mole. When she passed us, within a hundred yards, she dipped her flag. I was walking with Mr. Pulitzer at the time and mentioned the exchange of salutes. He was silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, "Has she passed us?" "Yes," I replied, "she's half-a-mile ahead of us now." "Have you got your pad with you? Just make a note to ask Thwaites to cable to New York from the next port we call at and tell someone to send two hundred of the best Havana cigars to the captain. That man has some sense. Most captains would have blown their damned whistle when they dipped their flag. Have a note written to the captain telling him that I appreciated his consideration."
Our voyage to Athens and thence, through the Corinth Canal, back to Mentone, was free from incident. J. P. discussed the possibility of going to Constantinople or to Venice, but our cabled inquiries about the weather brought discouraging replies describing an unusually cold season, and these projects were abandoned.
About this time Mr. Pulitzer's health showed a marked improvement, which was reflected in the most agreeable manner in the general conditions of life on the yacht. He had been worried for some weeks about his plans for going to New York, and this had interfered with his sleep, had increased his nervousness and aggravated every symptom of his physical weakness. With this matter finally disposed of he could look forward to a peaceful cruise, during which he would be able to catch up with his careful reading of the marked file of The World, and thus remove a weight from his mind.
He detested having work accumulate on his hands, but when his health was worse than usual this was unavoidable. He always drove himself to the last ounce of his endurance, and it was only when his condition indicated an imminent collapse that he would consent to drop everything except light reading, and to spend a few days out at sea without calling anywhere for letters, papers, or cables.
It was during this, our last, cruise in the Mediterranean that I discovered that Mr. Pulitzer was one of the best and most fascinating talkers I had ever heard. Once in a while, when he was feeling cheerful after a good night's rest and a pleasant day's reading, he monopolized the conversation at lunch or dinner. He was generally more willing to talk when we took our meals at a large round table on deck, for he loved the sea breeze and was soothed by it.
When he talked he simply compelled your attention. I often felt that, if he had not made his career otherwise, he might have been one of the world's greatest actors, or one of its most popular orators. In flexibility of tone, in variety of gesture, in the change of his facial expression he was the peer of anyone I have seen on the stage.
To an extraordinary flow of language he added a range of information and a vividness of expression truly astonishing. His favorite themes were politics and the lives of great men. To his monologues on the former subject he brought a ripe wisdom, based upon the most extensive reading and the shrewdest observation, and quickened by the keenest enthusiasm. He was by no means a political bigot; and there was not a political experiment, from the democracy of the Greeks to the referendum in Switzerland, with the details of which he was not perfectly familiar. Although he was a convinced believer in the Republican form of government, having, as he expressed it, "no use for the King business," he was fully alive to the peculiar dangers and difficulties with which modern progress has confronted popular institutions.
When the publication of some work like Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer would spend an hour before we left the table in giving us a picture of some exciting crisis in English politics, the high lights picked out in pregnant phrases of characterization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, in spontaneous epigram, and illustrative anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Holland House circle, of the genius of Cromwell, of Napoleon's campaigns, or sought to point a moral from the lives of Bismarck, Metternich, Louis XI, or Kossuth, every sentence was marked by the same penetrating analysis, the same facility of expression, the same clearness of thought.
On rare occasions he talked of his early days, telling us in a charming, simple, and unaffected manner of the tragic and humorous episodes with which his youth had been crowded. Of the former I recall a striking description of a period during which he filled two positions in St. Louis, one involving eight hours' work during the day, the other eight hours during the night. Four of the remaining eight were devoted to studying English.
His first connection with journalism arose out of an experience which he related with a wealth of detail which showed how deeply it had been burned into his memory.