His face was all besmirched with the moist
earth. R------ took the slain General's foot out of the stirrup, and
then went to report his death.
Much more he told me, being an exceedingly talkative old man, and seldom,
I suppose, finding so good a listener as myself. I like the man,--a
good-tempered, upright, bold and free old fellow; of a rough breeding,
but sufficiently smoothed by society to be of pleasant intercourse. He
is as dogmatic as possible, having formed his own opinions, often on very
disputable grounds, and hardened in them; taking queer views of matters
and things, and giving shrewd and not ridiculous reasons for them; but
with a keen, strong sense at the bottom of his character.
A little while ago I met an Englishman in a railway carriage, who
suggests himself as a kind of contrast to this warlike and
vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R------, but
had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied
the post of Inspector of Nuisances,--a rather puffy and consequential
man; gracious, however, and affable, even to casual strangers like
myself. The great contrast betwixt him and the American lies in the
narrower circuit of his ideas; the latter talking about matters of
history of his own country and the world,--glancing over the whole field
of politics, propounding opinions and theories of his own, and showing
evidence that his mind had operated for better or worse on almost all
conceivable matters; while the Englishman was odorous of his office,
strongly flavored with that, and otherwise most insipid.
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