this is but to say that he was a gentleman; yet is not that in itself a
fine kind of originality? Besides, he had a genuine appetite for the
things of earth, such as many another delicate thing--a damask
rose-bush, for example--must be convicted of too; and often, when some
one has asked him 'what he could have in common with so-and-so,' I have
heard him answer: 'Tobacco and beer.' Samuel Dale once described him as
Shelley with a chin; and perhaps the chin accounted for the absence of
any of those sentimental scruples with regard to beefsteaks and certain
varieties of jokes, for which the saint-like deserter of Harriet
Westbrook was distinguished.

A supremely quaint instance of this gift of accommodation befell during
that same holiday, which should not pass unrecorded, but which I offer
to the Reader with an emphatic _Honi soit qui mal y pense_. Despairing
of reaching a certain large manufacturing town on foot in time to put up
there, one evening, he was doing the last mile or two by rail, and, as
the train slackened speed he turned to his companions in the carriage to
enquire if they could tell him of a good hotel. He had but carelessly
noticed them before: an old man, a slight young woman of perhaps thirty,
and a girl about fifteen; working people, evidently, but marked by that
air of cleanly poverty which in some seems but a touch of ascetic
refinement. The young woman at once mentioned _The Bull_, and thereupon
a little embarrassed consultation in undertone seemed to pass between
her and the old man, resulting in a timid question as to whether
Narcissus would mind putting up with them, as they were poor folk, and
could well do with any little he cared to offer for his accommodation.
There was something of a sad winningness in the woman which had
predisposed him to the group, and without hesitation he at once
accepted, and soon was walking with them to their home, through streets
echoing with Lancashire 'clogs.' On the way he learnt the circumstances