“By the way, it is reported that Ruskin will be made poet laureate! My candidate, however, is Jean Ingelow. The Queen ought to have named a woman. Talking on the subject, I have seen with these eyes the original correspondence with which Prince Albert offered the laureateship to Samuel Rogers. Rogers was greatly pleased, but after consideration declined, because he was so old. The Prince then wrote to Rogers to ask him to name the laureate. Rogers named Tennyson. Then came a letter from the prime minister, in which he said: ‘We are not acquainted with the works of this gentleman, and will you be good enough to let me know whether he has ever written anything which would make it improper for a woman to name him for this post?’”
Mr. Hale stopped and laughed heartily. “Just think of that!” he added, with glee.
After some skirmishing about the bush—for the office of “interlocutor” is not very familiar to me—I asked Doctor Hale:
“What do you consider the best thing you ever did?” He did not seem annoyed or perplexed by the question. He thrust his arms behind his head, extended himself the full length of the lounge, and regarded me with his deep-set eyes. Doctor Hale’s face wrinkles in a curious way around his eyes. These are the features of his face. They are fine, deep, sad, careless of human opinion—except it has to be conciliated for a high purpose—and alert as a boy’s, ready for a truth or for a friend. I believe that a divine physiognomist would read Doctor Hale’s career in his gray eyes and their high ramparts. “Why, the young man’s head has an entirely different shape,” said the elder Darwin of his son Charles, on the young man’s return from his voyage in the “Beagle.” It struck me oddly that in a like manner Doctor Hale’s eyes had been a mirror of his life.
“I think,” began Doctor Hale thoughtfully, “that ‘In His Name,’ as a bit of literary work, is to be regarded as the best book I ever wrote. The story of ‘The Man Without a Country’ has circulated in much larger numbers. It was forged in the fire, and I think 296 its great popularity is due to the subject.”
“And what is your best literary work at present?”
After some hesitation Doctor Hale answered:
“I think my sermons are the best.”
This serious answer caused no little astonishment; for one naturally thinks of Doctor Hale as an author rather than as a hard-working minister.