Seem to me all the uses of this world!"
He was not, to be sure,
"The glass of fashion and the mold of form,"
for his nose, from the bench point of view, was nearly half an inch too long. But his "dejected haviour" and deep-rooted suspicion of his surroundings were Hamlet's own. He felt himself "be-netted round with villanies" and apprehensively watched the simple ways of our family in profound despondency and distrust. The fears that haunted him kept him so hushed that we grew to believe he was actually dumb,—a defect in physical endowment that might account for many abnormalities. Now and then the rigid little figure beside me on the veranda—for gradually, day by day, he edged an inch or two nearer—would give a stir of weariness or even drop, exhausted, for a nap, but in the main
"as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence" would "sit drooping."
Through all the hot summer days I had to see him,
"A dull and muddy mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams,"