He claimed to have been a soldier.
He certainly looked the part, for his fierce white moustache was curled up like horns on his purple face, at each side of his red nose, in a most milita style.

His shoulders were square and his gait was swaggering, beside which, he had an array of swear words that was new and tremendously impressive in Connecticut.

He had married late in life a woman who would have made him a good wife, had he allowed her.

But, a drunkard himself he set deliberately about bringing his wife to his own ways and with most lamentable success.

They had had no children, but some months before a brother's child, fifteen-year-old lad, had become a charge on their hands and, with any measure of good management, would have been a blessing to all.