he was able to pronounce on that evening. He used to feel humiliated by
it, and I have heard him say, "I'm sorry--I'm stammering badly
to-night!" but it would never have been very noticeable, if he had not
attended to it. It is clear, however, from some of his letters that he
felt it to be a real disability in talk, and even fancied that it made
him absurd, though as a matter of fact the little outward dart of his
head, as he forced the recalcitrant word out, was a gesture which his
friends both knew and loved.

He learned to adapt himself to persons of very various natures, and
indeed was so eager to meet people on their own ground that it seems to
me he was to a certain extent misapprehended. I have seen a good many
things said about him since his death which seem to me to be entire
misinterpretations of him, arising from the simple fact that they were
reflections of his companion's mood mirrored in his own sympathetic
mind. Further, I am sure that what was something very like patient and
courteous boredom in him, when he was confronted with some sentimental
and egotistical character, was interpretated as a sad and remote
unworldliness. Someone writing of him spoke of his abstracted and
far-off mood, with his eyes indwelling in a rapture of hallowed thought.
This seems to me wholly unlike Hugh. He was far more likely to have been
considering how he could get away to something which interested him
more.

Hugh's was really a very fresh and sparkling nature, never insipid,
intent from morning to night on a vital enjoyment of life in all its
aspects. I do not mean that he was always wanting to be amused--it was
very far from that. Amusement was the spring of his social mood; but he
had a passion too for silence and solitude. His devotions were eagerly
and rapturously practised; then he turned to his work. "Writing seems to