t, rapid walk by himself, a little measured round, and flew
back to his work. He generally, I should think, worked about eight hours
a day at this time. In the evening he would play a game of cards after
dinner, and would sit talking in the smoking-room, rapidly consuming
cigarettes and flicking the ash off with his forefinger. He was also, I
remember, very argumentative. He said once of himself that he was
perpetually quarrelling with his best friends. He was a most experienced
coat-trailer! My mother, my sister, my brother, Miss Lucy Tait who lives
with us, and myself would find ourselves engaged in heated arguments,
the disputants breathing quickly, muttering unheeded phrases, seeking in
vain for a loophole or a pause. It generally ended by Hugh saying with
mournful pathos that he could not understand why everyone set on
him--that he never argued in any other circle, and he could only entreat
to be let alone. It is true that we were accustomed to argue questions
of every kind with tenacity and even with invective. But the fact that
these particular arguments always dealt with the inconsistencies and
difficulties of ecclesiastical institutions revealed their origin. The
fact was that at this time Hugh was accustomed to assert with much
emphasis some extremely provocative and controversial position. He was
markedly scornful of Anglican faults and mannerisms, and behaved both
then and later as if no Anglicans could have any real and vital belief
in their principles, but must be secretly ashamed of them. Yet he was
acutely sensitive himself, and resented similar comments; he used to
remind me of the priest who said to Stevenson "Your sect--for it would
be doing it too much honour to call it a religion," and was then pained
to be thought discourteous or inconsiderate.

Discourteous, indeed, Hugh was not. I have known few people who could
argue so fiercely without personal innuendo. But, on the other hand, he
was both triumphant and sarcastic. There was an occasion at a later date
when he advanced some highly contestable points as assumptions, and my
aunt, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, in an agony of rationality, said to him, "But
these things are surely matters of argument, Hugh?" To which Hugh
replied, "Well, you see, I have the misfortune, as you regard it, of
belonging to a Church which happens to know."

Here is another extract from my diary at this time:

"_August_ 1903.--At dinner Hugh and I fell into a fierce argument, whi