inquire
into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was
made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe
in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim,
'Well! I see nothing in all that to laugh about.'

"With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a
subject. His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing
magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a
scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine
both sides of it. Certain it is, that, if any matter were
propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine
at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake
his capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at
length observe, that 'he had his doubts about the matter'; which
gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily
imposed upon. What is more, it has gained him a lasting name; for
to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of
Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler,
or, in plain English, _Doubter_.

"The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and
proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some
cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur.
He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five
inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such
stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex's
ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of
supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and
settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the
shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at
bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was
a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of
walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the
weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little
the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible
index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of
those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with
what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled fe