nder at the enormous handfuls of
snuff he took--not pinches, such as I had seen snuff-takers sniff up
from the backs of their hands many a time before, without bestowing a
thought on the action.

Oh, no, nothing of the sort!

They were actual handfuls that he extracted from his waistcoat pocket,
as I could not help noticing, on account of his roomy shooting-jacket
being wide open and thrown back; the old prodigal scooping up the
fragrant dust in his palm, and then doubling his fist and shoving it up
his nostrils with a violent snort of inhalement, after which he
proceeded to blow his red nose with another loud report, like that of a
blunderbuss going off. This was accompanied by the flourish of a
brightly coloured pocket-handkerchief, whose vivid hue approximated
closely to the general tint of his cheeks and eagle-like beak, and which
he held loosely, ready for action, in his disengaged left hand; for, his
right was ever at work oscillating between the magazine of snuff in his
deep waistcoat pocket and the nasal promontory that consumed it with
almost rhythmical regularity, sniff and snort and resonant trumpet blast
of satisfaction succeeding each other in systematic sequence, as the
veteran came down the stairway leisurely, step by step.

It all appeared to me very comical; but, I did not laugh at the old man
as another youngster might very pardonably have done, without any
thought of mocking or making fun of him.

To tell the truth, he seemed to me to be so out of place there that I
was actually pained on his account, believing, in my innocent ignorance,
that he had unhappily made a mistake in going up to the members'
entrance of the grand-looking club-house; and that the fat hall-porter
in scarlet, who now stood without the swinging glass doors of the
portal, had warned him thence, ordering him, so it struck my fancy, to
go down below by way of the area steps, to the basement of the
establishment, where his business would probably rather lie with the
lower menials of the mansion than with such an august personage as he,
one who acted solely as the janitor to the great ones of the earth
possessing the password of the club!

Yes, this was the thought uppermost in my mind; and, as the
queer-looking old gentleman continued to hobble downwards I began to
wonder whether the scullions in the kitchen, whom I could dimly discern
beneath the street level and behind a screen of iron railings, would
not, likewise, turn up