hard unemotional simplifying habit of his mind.

When one writes of Mr. Hughes, men ask, pardonably, "Which Mr.
Hughes? The old Mr. Hughes, or the new Mr. Hughes?" for he has had,
as the literary critics would say, his earlier and his later
manner.

But it is chiefly manner, a smile recently achieved, a different
way of wearing the beard, a little less of the stern moralist, a
little more of the man of the world. A connoisseur of Hughes, who
has studied him for nearly twenty years, after a recent
observation, pronounced judgment: "It's the same Hughes, a trifle
less cold, but just as dry." And the Secretary of State himself,
when one of the weeklies contained an article on "The New Mr.
Hughes," remarked, "People did not understand me then, that is
all."

These two eminent authorities being substantially agreed for the
first time during many divergent years, there must be something in
it. Mr. Hughes must be a gradually emerging personality. You take
that new warmth, recently detected; Mr. Hughes himself knows it was
always there. It is like the light ray of a star which has needed a
million years to reach the earth; it was always there but it
required a long time to get across.

Then the beard:--when Mr. Hughes was "handing the government back
to the people" in New York, it was a preacher's beard; you might
have encountered its like anywhere among the circuit riders. Now it
is a foreign secretary's beard; you might encounter it in any
European capital,--a world statesman's beard. The change of beard