Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Opening paragraphs

















Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty, and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.  At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life.  He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years.  But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than reprove.  "I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say, quaintly; "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way."  In this character it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men.  And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanor.

-Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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