When a young man of eighteen, Hale had the same fluent speech, the same gift of telling, impromptu oratory, that makes him to-day so much sought after as the spokesman of this cause and that. He likes to be at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, or the Oriental Society at Worcester, but finds it not profitable or possible regularly to attend clubs or ministers’ meetings. Like the two earthenware pots floating down the stream of Æsop’s fable, there are in Mr. Hale’s nature two clashing master-traits--the social, humanitarian, and democratic instinct, and the dignified reserve and exclusiveness of the Edward Everett strain in his blood. He is a tremendous social magnet turning now its attracting and now its repelling pole to the world; to-day bringing comfort and hope to a score of drowning wretches, and to-morrow barricading himself in his study and sending off to the printer passionate and humorous invectives against the ineffable brood of the world’s bores. It is naturally, therefore, a rather formidable matter for a stranger to get access to the penetralia of the Roxbury mansion. A certain lady friend of Mr. Hale’s was much disturbed by the above statement when it first appeared in _The Critic_. She affirms that the Doctor is a very approachable man. The following quotation from a letter of her niece (who, out of friendship for Mr. Hale, gives part of her time to helping him in his work) certainly seems irrefutable testimony in her favor:--“I was at Mr. Hale’s to-day from eleven to one o’clock. He receives an immense number of letters on all sorts of subjects, particularly charity undertakings, and we register them for him (I with three other girls) in a blank-book, so that he can refer to them at any time. He is very methodical; he is, indeed, a wonderful man, and you can realize the vast amount of work he does, by sitting an hour in the room with him and hearing ring after ring at the front door. One man wants a place as coachman; then comes a woman wishing a letter of introduction; and I could fill a page with the different requests, all listened to with so much patience, and immediately attended to.” Yet I know of a man who called five times in the vain endeavor to see Mr. Hale and get him to marry him. At last, in his despair, he went to a friend of the “Colonel’s,” a lady who bravely volunteered to storm the castle in the prospective bridegroom’s behalf. She effected her object by calling with the couple at six o’clock in the morning, yet felt sure she got a masterly beshrewing for her pains!