Not
that he was absolutely idle, or averse to business then; far from it.
The difficulty was, he was apt to be altogether too energetic. There
was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity
about him. He would be incautious in dipping his pen into his inkstand.
All his blots upon my documents, were dropped there after twelve
o'clock, meridian. Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly
given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further,
and was rather noisy. At such times, too, his face flamed with
augmented blazonry, as if cannel coal had been heaped on anthracite. He
made an unpleasant racket with his chair; spilled his sand-box; in
mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them
on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up and leaned over his table,
boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold
in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most
valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o'clock, meridian,
was the quickest, steadiest creature too, accomplishing a great deal of
work in a style not easy to be matched--for these reasons, I was willing
to overlook his eccentricities, though indeed, occasionally, I
remonstrated with him.
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