They were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of superfluous
salaries) bachelors. Generally (for they had not much to do) persons
of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason
mentioned before. Humorists, for they were of all descriptions; and,
not having been brought together in early life (which has a tendency
to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), but,
for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they
necessarily carried into it their separate habits and oddities,
unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they
formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic
retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant
fellows, full of chat--and not a few among them had arrived at
considerable proficiency on the German flute.

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton. He had
something of the choleric complexion of his countrymen stamped on his
visage, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to
the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember
to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in my young days,
_Maccaronies_. He was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy
as a gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him,
making up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if
he feared every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry
ready to imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of
the possibility of his becoming one: his tristful visage clearing
up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where
his picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire
of the master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for the
last five-and-twenty years), but not attaining the meridian of its