People said he was sociable, but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge to expand; and it was not a high order of sociability.

He was a great gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh would hardly have spared the reputation of his aged mother.

Newman had a kindness for old memories, but he found it impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays a very light weight.

His only aspirations were to hold out at poker, at his club, to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all round, to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create uncomfortable eddies and obstructions among the constituent atoms of the American colony.

He was shamefully idle, spiritless, sensual, snobbish.
He irritated our friend by the tone of his allusions to their native country, and Newman was at a loss to understand why the United States were not good enough for Mr.Tristram.He had never been a very conscious patriot, but it vexed him to see them treated as little better than a vulgar smell in his friend's nostrils, and he finally broke out and swore that they were the greatest country in the world, that they could put all Europe into their breeches' pockets, and that an American who spoke ill of them ought to be carried home in irons and compelled to live in Boston.