I understood presently that cheerfully, habitually, and in single-minded unconsciousness of any special merit distinguishing his deeds--he was achieving, amongst a very wretched population, a world of active good.
The lower orders liked him well; his poor, patients in the hospitals welcomed him with a sort of enthusiasm.
But stop--I must not, from the faithful narrator, degenerate into the partial eulogist.

Well, full well, do I know that Dr.John was not perfect, anymore than I am perfect.

Human fallibility leavened him throughout: there was no hour, and scarcely a moment of the time I spent with him that in act or speech, or look, he did not betray something that was not of a god.

A god could not have the cruel vanity of Dr.John, nor his sometime levity., No immortal could have resembled him in his occasional temporary oblivion of all but the present--in his passing passion for that present; shown not coarsely, by devoting it to material indulgence, but selfishly, by extracting from it whatever it could yield of nutriment to his masculine self-love: his delight was to feed that ravenous sentiment, without thought of the price of provender, or care for the cost of keeping it sleek and high-pampered.
The reader is requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two views which have been given of Graham Bretton--the public and private--the out-door and the in-door view.

In the first, the public, he is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies, as earnest in their exercise.