The growing form, moreover, kept pace exactly, and most beautifully, with the increasing tide of sonorous vibration that flooded himself, its utterer and the whole room.

Not that I ever saw him rough or uncourteous with the most exasperating fool that ever rubbed a man's nervous system the wrong way; but there was a quiet, lurking smile which, supported by very few words, used to seem to have the singular property of making the utterers of platitudes and the mistakers of non-sequiturs for sequiturs, uncomfortably aware of the nature of their words within a very few minutes after they had uttered them.

And he asked those personages thus suspended in that hole, saying, "What is the matter with you?" Thus questioned those utterers of Brahma replied, "It is even for offspring."

"Don't you remember how fond he was of quoting, 'Praise to the face is open disgrace'?" The late Sir Timothy, like many middle-class people, had taken a compliment almost as a personal offence; and regarded the utterer, however gracious or sincere, with suspicion.

The people sometimes catch up a remarkable word when uttered on a remarkable occasion by one of their number, and turn the utterer into ridicule, by attaching it to him as a nickname; and it is some consolation to think that this monster was therefore treated with the sobriquet of 'Stumpie,' and of course carried it about with him to his grave.