sermon adventures. There was
a story of a Harvest Festival sermon near Kemsing, in the days when he
used a manuscript; he found on arriving at the church that he had left
it behind him, and was allowed to remain in the vestry during the
service, writing out notes on the inside of envelopes torn open, with
the stump of a pencil which would only make marks at a certain angle.
The service proceeded with a shocking rapidity, and when he got to the
pulpit, spread out his envelopes, and addressed himself to the
consideration of the blessings of the Harvest, he found on drawing to an
end that he had only consumed about four minutes. He went through the
whole again, slightly varying the phraseology, and yet again repeated
the performance; only to find, on putting on his coat, that the
manuscript was in his pocket all the time.

He used to say that the most nervous experience in the world was to go
into a street or market-place of a town where he was to hold a Mission
with open-air sermons, and there, without accompaniment, and with such
scanty adherents as he could muster, strike up a hymn. By-standers would
shrug their shoulders and go away smiling. Windows would be opened,
figures would lean out, and presently withdraw again, slamming the
casement.

Hugh was always extremely nervous before a sermon. He told me that when
he was about to preach, he did not generally go in for the service, but
remained in the vestry until the sermon; and that he would lie on a sofa
or sit in a chair, in agonies of nervousness, with actual attacks of
nausea, and even sickness at times, until he was summoned, feeling that
he could not possibly get through. This left him after speaking a few
words: but he also maintained that on the rare occasions when he felt
quite confident and free from nervousness, the result was a failure: he
said that a real anxiety as to the effect of the sermon was a necessary
stimulus, and evoked a mental power which confidence was apt to leave
dormant.

X

THE CHANGE

Hugh has himself traced in full detail, in his book _The Confessions of
a Convert_, how he gradually became convinced that it was his duty to
make his submission to the Church of Rome; and I will not repeat the
story here. But I can recall very distinctly the period during which he
was making up his mind. He left Mirfield in the early summer of 1903, so
that when I came home for the summer holidays, he was living there. I
had myself just accep