They had acquired a habit of meeting to smoke together on certain evenings in the week, in the cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every imaginable subject--Mr.Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels of assertion, and Mr.Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools of sophistry.

They generally quarreled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning.

The bond of intercourse thus curiously established between them was strengthened on Mr.Vanstone's side by a hearty interest in his neighbor's three sons--an interest by which those sons benefited all the more importantly, seeing that one of the prejudices which their father had outlived was a prejudice in favor of his own children.
"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say, "with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every respect.

The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability.
My boys have been addle-headed from infancy.

If I had any capital to give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer--those being the only human vocations I know of which are certain to be always in request.