spectacles with large round glasses and the iron-gray hair. He does a
good deal of the talking at our table, and, to tell the truth, I rather
like to hear him. He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various
ways, and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can
rub against, and so get up and let off a superficial intellectual
irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you
remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides
against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so
particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown
and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs). I think they
begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en
mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use
your friend's prejudices. This is a sturdy-looking personage of a good
deal more than middle age, his face marked with strong manly furrows,
records of hard thinking and square stand-up fights with life and all its
devils. There is a slight touch of satire in his discourse now and then,
and an odd way of answering one that makes it hard to guess how much more
or less he means than he seems to say. But he is honest, and always has
a twinkle in his eye to put you on your guard when he does not mean to be
taken quite literally. I think old Ben Franklin had just that look. I
know his great-grandson (in pace!) had it, and I don't doubt he took it
in the straight line of descent, as he did his grand intellect.

The Member of the Haouse evidently comes from one of the lesser inland
centres of civilization, where the flora is rich in checkerberries and
similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels,
wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges,
as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are
entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious
earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter