The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by
Robert Louis Stevenson

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Title: The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Posting Date: June 25, 2008 [EBook #43]
Release Date: October 31, 1992

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. ***

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

by Robert Louis Stevenson

STORY OF THE DOOR

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never
lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward
in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.
At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something
eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never
found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent
symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts
of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone,
to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had
not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved
tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high
pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity
inclined to help rather than to reprove. "I incline to Cain's heresy,"
he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own
way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last
reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of
downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his
chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative
at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar
catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his
friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was
the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom
he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of
time, they implie