to getting him out to dinner, in evening dress and with a speech in
prospect, obstacles started up like the armed progeny of the Dragon's
Teeth. For, though no one enjoyed real society more than he did, he
was ardently averse from conversing as an official with persons
between whom and himself as a man there could be little sympathy.
Almost as much, too, did he dislike to meet the polite world merely on
the basis of the books that he had written, which his entertainers
were bound to praise whether or not they had read or comprehended
them, and to whose well-meant but inexpert eulogies he must constantly
respond with the threadbare and pathetic phrase, "I'm glad you liked
it." Bright, of course, insisted that fame and position carried
obligations which must be met, and he was constantly laying plots to
inveigle or surprise his friend into compliance. He often succeeded,
but he failed quite as frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might
have said, Hawthorne as a social lion was a rara avis, from first to
last. The foible of artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous,
society is that it so seldom achieves simple human relations.

Another chief friend of his was Francis Bennoch. England would never
have seemed "our old home" to my father, without the presence and
companionship of these two men. Both had literary leanings, both were
genial, true, and faithful; but in other respects they were widely
dissimilar. Bright was of the pure Saxon type; Bennoch represented
Great Britain at large; there were mingled in him English, Irish, and
Scotch ancestry. In himself he was a superb specimen of a human being;
broad-shouldered, straight, and vigorous, massive but active, with a
mellow, joyful voice, an inimitable brogue, sparkling black eyes full
of hearty sunshine and kindness, a broad and high forehead over bushy
brows, and black, wavy hair. He bubbled over with high spirits, humor,
and poetry, being, indeed, a poet in achievement, with a printed and