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.
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