nd interviews, and he used to say that it often happened that
the people least worth helping took up the most time. He always gave his
very best; but the people who most vexed him were those engaged in
religious inquiry, not out of any profound need, but simply for the
emotional luxury; and who argued round and round in a circle for the
pleasure of being sympathised with. Hugh was very clear and practical in
his counsels, and he was, I used to think, like a wise and even stern
physician, never influenced by sentiment. It was always interesting to
discuss a "case" with him. I do not mean that he discussed his cases
with me, but I used to ask him how to deal with some intellectual or
moral problem, and his insight seemed to me wonderfully shrewd,
sensible, and clear. He had a masterly analysis, and a power of seeing
alternatives and contingencies which always aroused my admiration. He
was less interested in the personal element than in the psychological;
and I used to feel that his strength lay in dealing with a case
scientifically and technically. Sometimes he had desperate, tragic, and
even alarming cases to deal with; and here his fearlessness and
toughness stood him in good stead. He never shrank appalled before any
moral enormity. He told me once of a series of interviews he had with a
man, not a Catholic, who appealed to him for help in the last extremity
of moral degradation. He became aware at last that the man was insane,
but he spared no pains to rescue him.

When he first began this work he had a wave of deep unhappiness; the
responsibility of the priesthood so overwhelmed him that for a time, I
have learned, he used to pray night after night, that he might die in
his sleep, if it were possible. I saw and guessed nothing of this, but I
think it was a mood of exhaustion, because he never exhibited anything
but an eager and animated interest in life.

One of his pleasures while he was at Cambridge and ever after was the
writing, staging, and rehearsing of little mystery-plays and sacred
scenes for the children of St. Mary's Convent at Cambridge and for the
choir boys of Westminster Cathedral. These he thoroughly enjoyed; he
always loved the companionship of children, and had exactly the right
way with them, treating them seriously, paternally, with a brisk
authority, and never sentimentally. They were beautiful and moving
little dramas, reverently performed. Unhappily I never saw one of them.
Even now I remember