Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1890-01-18
STANLEY's REVERENCE.
IL Has Been Developed by His Africa

IL Has Been Developed by His African
Life.
Smalley's London Letter In the New York
Tribune.
1T Is all n chorus of praise for Mr..
'Stanley's latest letters, to which tho
London papers without exception ac-
cord h honor OF ample space and large
type. He has conquered the last of his
critics. His courage, decision, judg-
ment, tact, all that marvellous combina-
ton Of qualities which are now, per-
haps, for the first time visible In their
full development, and all resting ON
that indomitable energy which never
owns TO fatigue or defeat, are now for
the hrst time fully recognized and adj
mitted and justly a~pplauded. There Isl
no discordant note In the homage.
Now also for the first time Is Justice
done to his power as a writer; perhaps,
also, because now for the first time are
his highest literary qualities shown.
There are passages in these letters
which read like verses out Of an Old
Observation-Disclosures at one moment and
Isaiah the next. 1t is the style of q
man who has done much and thought
much. Not in vain has he brooded over
various problems in the remorselesx
black forest of Africa. What were the
books he carried with him and read1
They cannot have been many. Com
tinual contact with savages and Oriental
life; that, too, has left it's mark.
How Carlyle would have delighted in
some OF this grim humor, and how
American is Stanley's power of leaving
things unsaid and coming straight to
the result, abandoning the intermediate
steps and processes to the inference of
the reader! IL ought to mention" he
writes, that through some error of the
native carriers employed by the Egypt
tans, a packet Of letters was intercepted
and Stanley found out the plot be
suspected and the plotter. Errors of
that sort only hapTen TO men who know
how to profit by them, and to contriye
them. lie omits TO mention what be-
came of Ibraham Effendi Ethan. His
speech TO his officers and TO Emin, when
Emin could not make up his mind to-
stay or go, reads like a speech from
Thucydides, and is probably Just about
as accurate a report of what was &C
tually said. i rather imagine that dis
courses half a column long with exor-
dunn and peroration. are rare in the
middle of Africa. The hollow square
of the Ianzibari rifles with the treach-
erous Egyptians in the middle, with
the choice freely offered them OF dis
or death, is a scene not soon to
be forgotten.
One is sorry for Emma man essen
TALLY so gallant and loyal, yet forever
yielding TO a fatal indecision. IL is
quite clear that Stanley at last made up
mind for him. There Is a limit
TO patience; at the end OF a year of hes
1t was finally reached. 1t is not
easy 10 imagine a man of S~tanley's tenn
permanent and temper coming away from
Africa without the man he had gone
to rescue. To return empty
after these years of heroic effort
might do for another-not for Stanley
and il is possible that Emin's wishes
at last to be a factor in the prob
lem. Measureless is his scorn for a
leader who cannot resolve either to lead
or TO follow; yet the expression of it is
kept entirely within the bounds OF de-
and this, like so many other
facts OF prime interest, the iudicious
is left to discover for itself. IL
1t breaks out once it is in the exclama-
II could save a dozen pashas IL
they were willing to be saved'f-a little
as II pashas were cheap in Africa.