e had given it the
relief of gilt buttons, on--which were wrought a small crown and anchor;
at a distance this button looked like the king's button, and gave him
the air of one who has a place about Court. He always wore a white
neckcloth without starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which last
furnished him with observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which
he had a great, but hitherto unsatisfied, desire of seeing worked by a
grand National United Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was
pale buff--of an evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected
sundry schemes of an "association for the improvement of native
manufactures." His trousers, matutinally, were of the color vulgarly
called "blotting-paper;" and he never wore boots,--which, he said,
unfitted a man for exercise,--but short drab gaiters and square-toed
shoes. His watch-chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each
seal, indeed, represented the device of some defunct company, and they
might be said to resemble the scalps of the slain worn by the
aboriginal Iroquois,--concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained
philanthropic designs, compounded of conversion to Christianity on
the principles of the English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous
exchange of beaver-skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.

That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had
always won, from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a
raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. "So like him,--so
good!" she would often say pensively. "They paid sixpence apiece for the
raffle,--twenty tickets,--and the doll cost L2. Nobody was taken in, and
the doll, poor thing (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter of its
value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten shillings did
to the chimney-sweepers." Naturally enough, I say, my mother liked Uncle
Jack; but my father liked him quite as well,--and that was a strong
proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However, it is noticeable
that when some retired scholar is once interested in an active man of
the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others are. Sympathy
with such a companion gratifies at once his curiosity and his indolence;
he can travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him, go with him
through all the adventures of which his own books speak so eloquently,
and all the time