Thus urged by arguments which he knew to be excellent, and hoping from
my zeal that I knew the same, he complied, took out his pencil, and
began his task.

He went patiently through it, without any apparent emotion or delay,
except frequently to make crosses with his pencil. Never was mortal
more amazed than I was at his incomprehensible coldness! 'Has he no
feeling?' said I. 'Is he dead? No token of admiration! no laughter! no
single pause of rapture!' It was astonishing beyond all belief!

Having ended, he put down the manuscript, and said not a word!

This was a mortification not to be supported. Speak he must. I endured
his silence perhaps half a minute, perhaps a whole one, but it was an
age! 'I am afraid, Mr. Turl,' said I, 'you are not very well pleased
with what you have read?'

The tone of my voice, the paleness of my lips, and the struggling
confusion of my eyes sufficiently declared my state of mind, and he
made no answer. My irritability increased. 'What, Sir,' said I, 'is it
so contemptible a composition as to be wholly unworthy your notice?'

I communicated much of the torture which I felt, but collecting
himself he looked at me with some compassion and much stedfastness,
and answered--'I most sincerely wish, Mr. Trevor, that what I have
to say, since you require me to speak, were exactly that which you
expected I should say. I confess, it gives me some pain to perceive
that you mistook your own motives, when you desired me to read
and mark what I might think to be faults. You imagined there were
no faults! forgetting that no human effort is without them. The