and hearing confessions for eleven hours a day, with occasional sermons
interspersed.

At times some of the Brothers went into residence at Westminster, in Dr.
Gore's house--he was a Canon of the Abbey--and there Hugh preached his
only sermon in the Abbey. But he was now devoting himself to Mission
preaching, and perfecting his system. He never thought very highly of
his gift of exposition. "I have a certain facility in preaching, but not
much," he once said, adding, "I have far more in writing." And I have
heard him say often that, if he let himself go in preaching, his
tendency was to become vulgar. I have in my possession hundreds of his
skeleton notes. They consist of the main points of his argument, written
out clearly and underlined, with a certain amount of the texture
indicated, sentence-summaries, epigrammatic statements, dicta, emphatic
conclusions. He attained his remarkable facility by persistent,
continuous, and patient toil; and a glance at his notebooks and
fly-leaves would be the best of lessons for anyone who was tempted to
depend upon fluid and easy volubility. He used to say that, after long
practice, a sermon would fall into shape in a very few moments; and I
remember his once taking carefully written address of my own,
summarising and denuding it, and presenting me with a little skeleton of
its essence, which he implored me to use; though I had not the courage
to do so. He said, too, that he believed that he could teach anyone of
ordinary brain-power and choice of language to preach extempore on these
lines in six months, if only he would rigidly follow his method. His
arguments, in the course of his sermons, did not always seem to me very
cogent; but his application of them was always most clear and effective.
You always knew exactly what he was driving at, and what point he had
reached; if it was not good logic, it was extremely effective logic, and
you seemed to run hand in hand with him. I remember a quite admirable