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
reveals the smile, which was probably always there, and the
splendid large teeth. The nose, standing out in bolder relief, is
handsomer and more distinguished. You see more of Mr. Hughes than
you used to and you gain by the improved vision.
Something has dropped from him, however, beside the ends of the
whiskers. I met him first when he was about to run for President in
1916. An icy veil, like frozen mist, seemed to hang between us. We
talked through it ineffectively. When I saw him again as Secretary
of State, that chill barrier had fallen away; to recur to my
figure, he gradually emerges.
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