12 STABLE SECRETS. 



in his shoes, and, it may seem unnecessary to add, failed to come 

 up to that exact height when standing simply in his stockings. 

 To borrow a conventional phrase, Mr. James Sloper had seen 

 fifty-eight summers, and consequently must have witnessed 

 about an equal number of winters, altliough they might not 

 exactly agree to one, more or less. Vigorous and active, both 

 mentally and physically, was Mr. James Sloper ; and his pale 

 and deeply-lined countenance bore ample testimony that the 

 summers and winters, to which reference has been made, had ■ 

 not been recorded with the seasons of the past without his 

 having a full share of anxiety in weathering those storms so 

 unerring in their influence upon the barometer of life. Thin, 

 even to bony, was the figure of Mr. James Sloper, and an air of 

 quiet respectability pervaded the long- skirted brown coat, almost 

 dusting his heels as he walked ; silver drab gaiters and knee- 

 breeches, waistcoat designed to match in texture and style, and 

 a white cravat, tied with great precision, so as to offer no im- 

 pediment to a flowing and crimped shirt frill, gave a tone, so to 

 speak, to the general effect, which a white cravat could only 

 have given. As a man of the world — who of the world was 

 most decidedly worldly — Mr. James Sloper knew the marketable 

 value of effect, and paid strict attention to the proper cause for 

 producing it. 



A physiognomist of no great pretensions, perhaps, might 

 have formed the hasty conclusion that the expression of Mr. 

 James Sloper's features was that of goodwill and charity with 

 all men ; but no greater physiognomical mistake could possibly 

 have been committed. He smiled, it is true, upon most, if not 

 upon all, occasions ; but universal benevolence was anything but 

 a deeply planted sentiment in the breast of Mr. James Sloper. 

 In his reflective moments, at an early period of his public life, < 

 as a public man in a public stable, he arrived at the irrevocable 

 decision that the duty he owed himself — apart from any claim 

 which society might have upon him, and which he thought 

 expedient to repudiate — was " to get as much money as fast as 



