allowed he seldom said a foolish thing.  So invincible was his
     gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through
     the whole course of along and prosperous life.  Nay, if a joke were
     uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it
     was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity.  Sometimes he
     would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much
     explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pikestaff, he would
     continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out
     the ashes, would exclaim, ’Well!  I see nothing in all that to laugh
     about.’

“With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject.  His adherents accounted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas.  He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it.  Certain it is, that, if any matter were propounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his capacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe, that ‘he had his doubts about the matter;’ which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and not easily imposed upon.  What is more, it has gained him a lasting name; for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of Twiller; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter.

“The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur.  He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference.  His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that dame Nature, with all her sex’s ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders.  His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking.  His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids.  His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression.  Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a spitzenberg apple.