When you believed you had learnt it line by line it would startle you by a phase quite new, and beautiful as new.

For it was not one of your impassive faces, whose owners count it pride to harden into a mass of stone those lineaments which nature made as the flesh and blood representation of the man's soul.

True, it had its reticences, its sacred disguises, its noble powers of silence and self-control.

It was a fair-written, open book; only, to read it clearly, you must come from its own country, and understand the same language.
For the rest, John was decidedly like the "David" whose name I still gave him now and then--"a goodly person;" tall, well-built, and strong.
"The glory of a young man is his strength;" and so I used often to think, when I looked at him.

He always dressed with extreme simplicity; generally in grey, he was fond of grey; and in something of our Quaker fashion.