of adaptation to the part he happened to be playing. On
his ordination day, when most men assume a garb severely clerical, he
was dressed like a country squire, thus proclaiming to fathers and
brethren, and to all the world, that he was not going to allow
ordination to play havoc with his chosen career. Now this was typical,
and it is its typical quality that is important. It applied not to
dress alone. It applied to speech. Drummond would affect no style of
address simply on the ground that it was usual upon certain platforms
or in certain rostrums. Did it fit him? Was it simple, natural, easy,
effective? If not, he would not use it. Nor would he adopt a course
of procedure simply because it was customary and was considered
correct. If, to him, it seemed like wearing ready-made clothes, he
would have none of it. Here you have the key to his whole life.
Everything had to fit him like a glove, or he would have nothing to do
with it. His scientific lectures, his evangelistic addresses, his
personal interviews with students, even his public prayers, were
modelled on no regulation standard, on no established precedent; they
were couched in the language, and expressed in the style, that most
perfectly suited his own charming and magnetic individuality.

Professor James, of Harvard, said of Henri Bergson, the Parisian
philosopher, that his utterance fitted his thought like that elastic
silk underclothing which follows every movement of the skin. Drummond
would have considered that the ideal. Generally speaking, he was
impervious to criticism; but if you had told him that a single phrase
rang hollow, or that some expression had savoured of artificiality, or
that even a gesture appeared like affectation, you would have stabbed
him to the quick. It was a great question in his day as to whether he
was orthodox or heterodox. Drummond regarded all standards of
orthodoxy and of heterodoxy as so many tailors' models. Orthodoxy and
heterodoxy stand related to truth just as those wonderful wickerwork
stands and plaster busts that adorn every dressmaker's establishment
stand related to the grace and beauty of the female form. If you had
asked Drummond to what school of thought he belonged, he would have
told you that he never wore ready-made clothes.

I tremble lest, one of these days, these notions of mine on the subject
of ready-made clothes should assume the proportions of a sermon, and
demand pulpit utterance. T