President James Walker, always the keenest of observers, once said of Hale that he took sides upon every question while it was being stated. This doubtless came, in part at least, from his having been reared in a newspaper office, or, as he said more tersely, having been “cradled in the sheets of the ‘Advertiser,’ ” and bred to strike promptly. His strongest and weakest points seem to have been developed in his father's editorial office. Always ready to give unselfish sympathy, he could not always dispense deliberate justice. One of his favorite sayings was that his ideal of a committee was one which consisted of three persons, one of whom should be in bed with chronic illness, another should be in Europe, and he himself should be the third. It was one of his theories that clergymen were made to do small duties neglected by others, and he did them at a formidable sacrifice of time and in his own independent and quite ungovernable way. Taking active part for the Nation during the Civil War, --so active that his likeness appears on the Soldiers' Monument on Boston Common,--he did not actually go to the war itself as chaplain of a regiment, as some of his friends desired; for they justly considered him one of the few
