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The word that comes to mind for me is presence.
If the object has a presence that's appealing,

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in other words, you want to be in its presence.
You want to touch it, you want to stand back

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and examine it, perhaps admire it, perhaps
not. So, that's the kind of the overarching

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approach, I guess, that I must have taken.
Not consciously, but you know. He did several

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things that not every missionary felt necessary
to learn. He was a blacksmith, he, I guess,

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hadn't he studied anthropology as well as
medicine and divinity? He retired from his,

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I believe, 34 years. I believe he went out
in 1925 or thereabouts. And when I finished

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my two years and a half there in the spring
of 1960, he was preparing to leave at almost

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the same time. I was coming home for a transfer,
he was coming home to retire. So, I stayed

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in close touch with him back here, and I actually
invited him myself and accompanied him to

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do lectures to the budding Peace Corps. And
we went to two universities, one in Pittsburgh,

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the other one may have been Penn State. - Penn
State, not bad. - Yeah. On one of the occasions

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that he'd brought things for me to see and
possibly buy, we came up with the idea that

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we would travel to a number of countries,
in fact, almost 15 of them. One of my really

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more satisfying relationships was with the
director of the national museums. And I made

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a habit in virtually every one of the missions.
Very soon after arrival, I would try to get

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in touch with the museum systems and discover
what are your rules, how do we conform with

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what you want to happen here, and in particular,
what should we do if we plan to take objects

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away from your country? The Belgian government
had named as, at the behest of the Zairian

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government, they had chosen a truly outstanding
Africanist who had worked with the Tavira

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museum and who had become a specialist in
the study of the Kuba people. His name was

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Joseph Cornet, and he used the title Brother,
Frère Cornet. He was the director of the

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National Museums of Zaire. And they said,
"No, but do you have anything else at home?"

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And I said, "Well yes, a few things." And
they said, "Can we go home with you?" So,

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they went home with us and we got to be on
kind of a pattern of being frequently in touch.

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And Margaret attended my wedding and she was
godmother to one of the kids. I would like

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to put Léopold Senghor as influencing me
also, because I love the way he wrote and

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tried to read as much of his poetry as I could
find. And also, he worked really, really seriously

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at, well, there was the very elaborate international
kind of conference and exhibit that he sponsored

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there at the.