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Sir Abraham was a tall thin man, with hair prematurely
gray, but bearing no other sign of age; he had a slight stoop,
in his neck rather than his back, acquired by his constant habit
of leaning forward as he addressed his various audiences. He
might be fifty years old, and would have looked young for his
age, had not constant work hardened his features, and given
him the appearance of a machine with a mind. His face was
full of intellect, but devoid of natural expression. You would
say he was a man to use, and then have done with; a man to
be sought for on great emergencies, but ill-adapted for ordinary
services; a man whom you would ask to defend your property,
but to whom you would be sorry to confide your love. He was
bright as a diamond, and as cutting, and also as unimpressionable.
He knew everyone whom to know was an honour, but he was without
a friend; he wanted none, however, and knew not the meaning
of the word in other than its parliamentary sense. A friend! Had
he not always been sufficient to himself, and now, at fifty, was
it likely that he should trust another? He was married, indeed,
and had children, but what time had he for the soft idleness of
conjugal felicity? His working days or term times were occupied
from his time of rising to the late hour at which he went to rest,
and even his vacations were more full of labour than the busiest
days of other men. He never quarrelled with his wife, but he
never talked to her--he never had time to talk, he was so
taken up with speaking. She, poor lady, was not unhappy;
she had all that money could give her, she would probably
live to be a peeress, and she really thought Sir Abraham the
best of husbands.
Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the
brightest at the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he
always sparkled; whether in society, in the House of Commons,
or the courts of law, coruscations flew from him; glittering
sparkles, as from hot steel, but no heat; no cold heart
was ever cheered by warmth from him, no unhappy soul ever
dropped a portion of its burden at his door.
With him success alone was praiseworthy, and he knew none
so successful as himself. No one had thrust him forward; no
powerful friends had pushed him along on his road to power.
No; he was attorney-general, and would, in all human probability,
be lord chancellor by sheer dint of his own industry and his own
talent. Who else in all the world rose so high with so little help?
A premier, indeed! Who had ever been premier without mighty
friends? An archbishop! Yes, the son or
grandson of a great noble, or else, probably, his tutor. But
he, Sir Abraham, had had no mighty lord at his back; his
father had been a country apothecary, his mother a farmer's
daughter. Why should he respect any but himself? And so
he glitters along through the world, the brightest among the
bright; and when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his
fathers, no eye will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn
for its lost friend.
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