基本信息
dicean neutrality which lay between the communion people of the parish and the drunken section, - that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture. since he lived six times as many working days as sundays, oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own - the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. he wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like dr johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp - their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity. mr oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to sic. this instrument being several years older than oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. the smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. the stopping peculiarity of his watch oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil c
