n living can appall; and hence too
often the bravo, assuming the hero, and making himself pass for one,
succeeds as only a hero should.

But as for honest Hickman, the good man is so generally meek, as I
imagine, that I know not whether I have any preference paid me in his
obsequiousness. And then, when I rate him, he seems to be so naturally
fitted for rebuke, and so much expects it, that I know not how to
disappoint him, whether he just then deserve it, or not. I am sure, he
has puzzled me many a time when I have seen him look penitent for faults
he has not committed, whether to pity or laugh at him.

You and I have often retrospected the faces and minds of grown people;
that is to say, have formed images for their present appearances,
outside and in, (as far as the manners of the persons would justify us
in the latter) what sort of figures they made when boys and girls. And
I'll tell you the lights in which HICKMAN, SOLMES, and LOVELACE, our
three heroes, have appeared to me, supposing them boys at school.

Solmes I have imagined to be a little sordid, pilfering rogue, who would
purloin from every body, and beg every body's bread and butter from him;
while, as I have heard a reptile brag, he would in a winter-morning spit
upon his thumbs, and spread his own with it, that he might keep it all
to himself.

Hickman, a great overgrown, lank-haired, chubby boy, who would be
hunched and punched by every body; and go home with his finger in his
eye, and tell his mother.

While Lovelace I have supposed a curl-pated villain, full of fire,
fancy, and mischief; an orchard-robber, a wall-climber, a horse-rider
without saddle or bridle, neck or nothing: a sturdy rogue, in short,
who would kick and cuff, and do no right, and take no wrong of any
body; would get his head broke, then a plaster for it, or let it heal
of itself; while he went on to do more mischief, and if not to get,
to deserve, broken bones. And the same dispositions have grown up with
them, and distinguish them as me, with no very material alteration.

Only that all men are monkeys more or less, or else that you and I
should have such baboons as these to choose out of, is a mortifying
thing, my dear.

I am sensible that I am a little out of season in treating thus
ludicrously the subject I am upon, while you are so unhappy; and if
my manner does not divert you, as my flightiness used to do, I am
inexcusable both to you, and to my own heart: which, I do assu