e
this _never_ is best in a book; he is always greater than
his work.

In appearance they were as curiously unlike; my uncle short and round to
rotundity, homely and florid in feature. _I_ used to think Socrates must
have been like him in visage as well as in much of his mind. He was
careless in his dress, his hands in his pockets as a rule, and strenuous
only in smoking or in sleep; with a large, full skull, a humorous
twinkle in his cold, blue eye, a soft, low voice, expressing every kind
of thought in the same, sometimes plaguily _douce_ tone; a great power
of quiet and telling sarcasm, large capacity of listening to and of
enjoying other men's talk, however small.

My father--tall, slim, agile, quick in his movements, graceful, neat to
nicety in his dress, with much in his air of what is called style, with
a face almost too beautiful for a man's, had not his eyes commanded it
and all who looked at it, and his close, firm mouth been ready to say
what the fiery spirit might bid; his eyes, when at rest,
expressing--more than almost any other's I ever saw--sorrow and tender
love, a desire to give and to get sympathy, and a sort of gentle, deep
sadness, as if that was their permanent state, and gladness their
momentary act; but when awakened, full of fire, peremptory, and not to
be trifled with; and his smile, and flash of gayety and fun, something
no one could forget; his hair in early life a dead black; his eyebrows
of exquisite curve, narrow and intense; his voice deep when unmoved and
calm; keen and sharp to piercing fierceness when vehement and roused--in
the pulpit, at times a shout, at times a pathetic wail; his utterance
hesitating, emphatic, explosive, powerful,--each sentence shot straight
and home; his hesitation arising from his crowd of impatient ideas, and
his resolute will that they should come in their order, and some of them
not come at all, only the best, and his settled determination that each
thought should be dressed in the very and only word which he stammered
on till it came,--it was generally worth his pains and ours.

Uncle Johnston, again, flowed on like Caesar's _Arar_, _incredibili
lenitate_, or like linseed out of a poke. You can easily fancy the
spiritual and bodily contrast of these men, and can fancy too, the kind
of engagements they would have with their own proper weapons on these
Friday evenings, in the old manse dining-room, my father showing uncle
out into the darkn