On the contrary, never did the _beau sexe_ have a humbler or more devoted servant.

As nothing in his estimation was less becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental than flirtation.
He had the old man's weakness, garrulity; and he told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting anything in them but the point.
This omission did not arise from the want either of memory or of humour; but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to all jesters.

He could not persuade his lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrateful; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier, despite of himself,--and washed it away.

He was a fine wreck, a little prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting on that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth, with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smiles and glow.

He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously particular in the choice of his silk stockings.