No one--not even the nurse of his infancy--had ever
imputed a fault either to his character or to his deportment; for he
had come into the world endowed with an infallible instinct for the
commonplace. In any profession he would have won success as a shining
light of mediocrity, since the ruling motive of his conduct was less the
ambition to excel than the moral inability to be peculiar. His mind was
small and solemn, and he had worn three straight and unyielding wrinkles
across his forehead in his earnest endeavour to prevent people from
acting, and especially from thinking, lightly. This sedulous devotion to
the public morals kept him not only a trifle spare in figure, but lent
an habitual manner of divine authority to his most trivial utterance.
His head, seen from the rear, was a little flat, but this, fortunately,
did not show in the pulpit--where at the age of twenty-four his
eloquence enraptured his congregation.
"I postponed my visit to Applegate until to-morrow," he said, when
he had given her what he thought was sufficient time to recover her
composure. "If you are returning shortly, perhaps I may have the
pleasure of driving you in my gig.
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