Pinceney, our President.
Pinceney possesses a mind, perhaps the most comprehensive in all Paddington. I have known him—I wish I could say intimately—now for over nine months, and I can confidently assert that I have never yet heard him confess to ignorance of any department of human knowledge, of any branch of modern thought! In intellectual stature he towers miles above us all, and weekly increases that altitude under our very eyes by drinking two bottles of some sparkling beverage composed of phosphates. He is coldly tolerant of the world's failings, and is understood to confine himself to a fish diet. He speaks little, but that little falls with immense weight. Pinceney is not genial, or, indeed social of manner—he suffers us, but not gladly—listening to each speaker with conscientious attention, as if it was always possible that he might utter something not immeasurably below contempt before he sat down. He has a little bell by which he warns the wanderer, and paralyses the prolix, and his preliminary caress of this bell is a rebuke in itself. It would be too much to say that Pinceney is popular amongst his fellow Gargoyles; he neither courts nor desires popularity. Indeed, he ranges somewhat too much apart, and goes home alone by the Underground the moment his duties are concluded. But he is greatly respected, and if we feel, as we sometimes do feel, that his standard is rather too high and exacting, at other times the consciousness acts upon us as a decided incentive.