his hat; dry smile on bland countenance; tall, lank individual in very
seedy black. With him my tale begins; for if I had never indulged in an
Uncle Popworth I should never have sported an Iron-Clad.

Quite right, sir; his arrival _was_ a surprise to me. To know how great
a surprise, you must understand why I left city, friends, business, and
settled down in this quiet village. It was chiefly, sir, to escape the
fascinations of that worthy old gentleman that I bought this place, and
took refuge here with my wife and little ones. Here we had respite,
respite and nepenthe from our memories of Uncle Popworth; here we used
to sit down in the evening and talk of the past with grateful and
tranquil emotions, as people speak of awful things endured in days that
are no more. To us the height of human happiness was raising green corn
and strawberries, in a retired neighborhood where uncles were unknown.
But, sir, when that Phantom, that Vampire, that Fate, loomed before my
vision that day, if you had said, "Trover, I'll give ye sixpence for
this neat little box of yours," I should have said, "Done!" with the
trifling proviso that you should take my uncle in the bargain.

The matter with him? What indeed could invest human flesh with such
terrors,--what but this? he was--he is--let me shriek it in your ear--a
bore--a BORE! of the most malignant type; an intolerable, terrible,
unmitigated BORE!

That book under his arm was a volume of his own sermons;--nine hundred
and ninety-nine octavo pages, O Heaven! It wasn't enough for him to
preach and re-preach those appalling discourses, but then the ruthless
man must go and print 'em! When I consider what booksellers--worthy men,
no doubt, many of them, deserving well of their kind--he must have
talked nearly into a state of syncope before ever he found one to give