from its length of waist, and ample skirt, would fit Bumbo Green, while
his trowsers, being made of some cheap and shrinking material, have
gradually contracted their limits, and look now exactly like
knee-breeches, without the usual buttons at the bottom.

These, with the addition of a pair of green spectacles, the glass of one
being absent, and permitting the look-out of a sharp, grey eye, twinkling
with drollery and good humour, form the most palpable of his externals.
In point of character, they who best knew him represented him as the
best-tempered, best-hearted fellow breathing; ever ready to assist a
friend, and always postponing his own plans and his own views, when he
had any, to the wishes and intentions of others. Among the many odd
things about him, was a constant preference to travelling on foot, and a
great passion for living abroad, both of which tastes he gratified,
although his size might seem to offer obstacles to the one, and his total
ignorance of every continental language, would appear to preclude the
other; with a great liking for tobacco, which he smoked all day--a
fondness for whist and malt liquors--his antipathies were few; so that
except when called upon to shave more than once in the week, or wash his
hands twice on the same day, it was difficult to disconcert him. His
fortune was very ample; but although his mode of living was neither very
ostentatious nor costly, he contrived always to spend his income. Such
was the gentleman I now presented to my friends, who, I must confess,
appeared strangely puzzled by his manner and appearance. This feeling,
however, soon wore off; and before he had spent the morning in their
company, he had made more way in their good graces, and gone farther to
establish intimacy, than many a more accomplished person, with an
unexceptionable coat and accurate whisker might have effected in
a fortnight. What were his gifts in this way, I am, alas, most
deplorably ignorant of; it was not, heaven knows, that he possessed any