词汇 | doctor livingstone i presume |
词源 | Doctor Livingstone, I presume! The phrase is still used in a humorous sense, as it was several generations ago. It recalls, of course, the very British greeting of journalist Sir Henry Mor- ton Stanley when after a long, arduous journey—only 700 miles in 236 days—he found the ailing Scottish missionary- explorer David Livingstone on the island of Ujiji in the heart of Africa. The star reporter had completed one of the greatest manhunts of all time. Deserted by his bearers, plagued by dis- ease and warring tribes, he was probably too tired and over- whelmed to think of anything else to say. Stanley (1841–1904) had been sent to Africa by the New York Herald to locate the famous explorer, Livingstone, feared dead or swallowed up by the Dark Continent. Born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, Stanley assumed the name of his adoptive father when he emi- grated to America as a youth. He later became a noted explorer in his own right. Dr. Livingstone died, aged 60, a year after the reporter left him in 1873. His body was shipped back to En- gland and buried in Westminster Abbey. |
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