[The Life of John Sterling by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link bookThe Life of John Sterling CHAPTER VIII 4/12
He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively steps; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both.
A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much-suffering man.
His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if preaching,--you would have said, preaching earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things.
I still recollect his "object" and "subject," terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into "om-m-mject" and "sum-m-mject," with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along.
No talk, in his century or in any other, could be more surprising. Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with profound reverence, and was often with him by himself, for a good many months, gives a record of their first colloquy.
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