Falkland, would listen with reluctance
to any matrimonial proposal. Grimes he selected as being in all respects
the diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of
vicious propensities, but in an inconceivable degree boorish and
uncouth. His complexion was scarcely human; his features were coarse,
and strangely discordant and disjointed from each other. His lips were
thick, and the tone of his voice broad and unmodulated. His legs were of
equal size from one end to the other, and his feet misshapen and clumsy.
He had nothing spiteful or malicious in his disposition, but he was a
total stranger to tenderness; he could not feel for those refinements in
others, of which he had no experience in himself. He was an expert
boxer: his inclination led him to such amusements as were most
boisterous; and he delighted in a sort of manual sarcasm, which he could
not conceive to be very injurious, as it left no traces behind it. His
general manners were noisy and obstreperous; inattentive to others; and
obstinate and unyielding, not from any cruelty and ruggedness of
temper, but from an incapacity to conceive those finer feelings, that
make so large a part of the history of persons who are cast in a gentler
mould.
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