He lives in a kind of twilight which observes objects, and his
remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary
people live. He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his
views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those
generally accepted. He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he
startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of
Shakespeare's plays into this out-of-the-way place. Up from the village
now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious
confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the
destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons. Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the
only martyr in his calendar. The sourest-tempered man, I think, that
ever engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. I wonder that the oddity
of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should
put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village
innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he
visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen
to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by
sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a
gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite unconscious of
my floral satire.
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