He was vehement, and hated dogmatic statements with which he did not
agree. When he argued, he used a good deal of gesture, waving his hands
as though to clear the air, emphasising what he said with little sweeps
and openings of his hands, sometimes covering his face and leaning
forwards, as if to gain time for the onset. His arguments were not so
much clear as ingenious, and I never knew anyone who could defend a poor
case so vigorously. When he was strained and tired, he would argue more
tenaciously, and employ fantastic illustrations with great skill; but it
always blew over very quickly, and as a rule he was good-tempered and
reasonable enough. But he liked best a rapid and various interchange of
talk. He was bored by slow-moving and solemn minds, but could extract a
secret joy from pompous utterances, while nothing delighted him more
than a full description of the exact talk and behaviour of affected and
absurd people.

His little stammer was a very characteristic part of his manner. It was
much more marked when he was a boy and a young man, and it varied much
with his bodily health. I believe that it never affected him when
preaching or speaking in public, though he was occasionally nervous
about its doing so. It was not, so to speak, a long and leisurely
stammer, as was the case with my uncle, Henry Sidgwick, the little toss
of whose head as he disengaged a troublesome word, after long dallying
with a difficult consonant, added a touch of _friandise_ to his talk.
Hugh's stammer was rather like a vain attempt to leap over an obstacle,
and showed itself as a simple hesitation rather than as a repetition. He
used, after a slight pause, to bring out a word with a deliberate
emphasis, but it never appeared to suspend the thread of his talk. I
remember an occasion, as a young man, when he took sherry, contrary to
his wont, through some dinner-party; and when asked why he had done
this, he said that it happened to be the only liquid the name of which