"Looks like a rural dean or a chancery judge, and was obviously intended by Nature to be a professor of physics.

As an actual fact he was first a watchmaker, then a maker of optical instruments, and now he is mechanical factotum to a medical jurist.

He is my right-hand, is Polton; takes an idea before you have time to utter it--but you will make his more intimate acquaintance by-and-by." "Where did you pick him up ?" I asked.
"He was an in-patient at the hospital when I first met him, miserably ill and broken, a victim of poverty and undeserved misfortune.

I gave him one or two little jobs, and when I found what class of man he was I took him permanently into my service.

He is perfectly devoted to me, and his gratitude is as boundless as it is uncalled for." "What are the photographs he was referring to ?" I asked.
"He is making an enlarged _facsimile_ of one of the thumb-prints on bromide paper and a negative of the same size in case we want the print repeated." "You evidently have some expectation of being able to help poor Hornby," said I, "though I cannot imagine how you propose to go to work.