Charlson was a man not without ability; yet he did not prosper.

Sundry circumstances stood in his way as a medical practitioner: he was needy; he was not a coddle; he gossiped with men instead of with women; he had married a stranger instead of one of the town young ladies; and he was given to conversational buffoonery.

Moreover, his look was quite erroneous.

Those only proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for laughter or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and a bold black eye that made timid people nervous.

His companions were what in old times would have been called boon companions--an expression which, though of irreproachable root, suggests fraternization carried to the point of unscrupulousness.