Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.
At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life.
He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years.
But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.
'I incline to Cain’s heresy,' he used to say quaintly: 'I let my brother go to the devil in his own way. ' In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men.
And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour. No doubt the feat was easy to Mr.
Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were