He wore a black coat; but to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the relief of gilt buttons, on--which were wrought a small crown and anchor; at a distance this button looked like the king's button, and gave him the air of one who has a place about Court.

He always wore a white neckcloth without starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which last furnished him with observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which he had a great, but hitherto unsatisfied, desire of seeing worked by a grand National United Britons Company.

His waistcoat of a morning was pale buff--of an evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected sundry schemes of an "association for the improvement of native manufactures." His trousers, matutinally, were of the color vulgarly called "blotting-paper;" and he never wore boots,--which, he said, unfitted a man for exercise,--but short drab gaiters and square-toed shoes.

His watch-chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each seal, indeed, represented the device of some defunct company, and they might be said to resemble the scalps of the slain worn by the aboriginal Iroquois,--concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained philanthropic designs, compounded of conversion to Christianity on the principles of the English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous exchange of beaver-skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.
That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had always won, from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers.

"So like him,--so good!" she would often say pensively.