It is needless to say that Mr.Mivers eschewed toddy; but beside him, on a chair, was a tumbler and a large carafe of iced water.
SIR PETER.--"Cousin Mivers, you have now had time to study Kenelm, and to compare his character with that assigned to him in the Doctor's letter." MIVERS (languidly).--"Ay." SIR PETER.--"I ask you, as a man of the world, what you think I had best do with the boy.

Shall I send him to such a tutor as the Doctor suggests?
Cousin John is not of the same mind as the Doctor, and thinks that Kenelm's oddities are fine things in their way, and should not be prematurely ground out of him by contact with worldly tutors and London pavements." "Ay," repeated Mr.Mivers more languidly than before.

After a pause he added, "Parson John, let us hear you." The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking somewhat through his nose,-- "At the morning of life--" Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his couch, and closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning himself to a homily.
"At the morning of life, when the dews--" "I knew the dews were coming," said Mivers.

"Dry them, if you please; nothing so unwholesome.

We anticipate what you mean to say, which is plainly this, When a fellow is sixteen he is very fresh: so he is; pass on; what then ?" "If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cynicism," said the Parson, "why did you ask to hear me ?" "That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you were going to commence in that florid style?
Morning of life indeed! bosh!" "Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing John's style in 'The Londoner;' and I will beg you to remember that my son's morning of life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped in its bud by a cousin.