He is a tall, slim young man, six
feet two, dressed in a country-made coat of light blue (taken, as he
tells me, in exchange for dental operations), black pantaloons, and
clumsy, cowhide hoots. Self-conceit is very strongly expressed in his
air; and a doctor once told him that he owed his life to that quality;
for, by keeping himself so stiffly upright, he opens his chest, and
counteracts a consumptive tendency. He is not only a dentist, which
trade he follows temporarily, but a licensed preacher of the Baptist
persuasion, and is now on his way to the West to seek a place of
settlement in his spiritual vocation. Whatever education he possesses,
he has acquired by his own exertions since the age of twenty-one,--he
being now twenty-four. We talk together very freely; and he has given me
an account, among other matters, of all his love-affairs, which are
rather curious, as illustrative of the life of a smart young country
fellow in relation to the gentle sex. Nothing can exceed the exquisite
self-conceit which characterizes these confidences, and which is
expressed inimitably in his face, his upturned nose, and mouth, so as to
be truly a caricature; and he seems strangely to find as much food for
his passion in having been jilted once or twice as in his conquests.
Pages:
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198