It will be seen that I am describing a clever man; and this is really the reason why Dr. Sloper had become a local celebrity.
Mrs. Sloper was amiable, graceful, accomplished, elegant, and in 1820 she had been one of the pretty girls of the small but promising capital which clustered about the Battery and overlooked the Bay, and of which the uppermost boundary was indicated by the grassy waysides of Canal Street.
He was very witty, and he passed in the best society of New York for a man of the world--which, indeed, he was, in a very sufficient degree.
I hasten to add, to anticipate possible misconception, that he was not the least of a charlatan.At the time at which we are chiefly concerned with him, he was some fifty years of age, and his popularity was at its height.
He was a thoroughly honest man--honest in a degree of which
runescape gold he had perhaps lacked the opportunity to give the complete measure; and, putting aside the great good-nature of the circle in which he practised, which was rather fond of boasting that it possessed the "brightest" doctor in the country, he daily justified his claim to the talents attributed to him by the popular voice.
It must be confessed that fortune had favoured him, and that he had found the path to prosperity very soft to his tread.He was an observer, even a philosopher, and to be bright was so natural to him, and (as the popular voice said) came so easily, that he never aimed at mere effect, and had none of the little tricks and pretensions of second-rate reputations.
He had married at the age of twenty-seven, for love, a very charming girl, Miss Catherine Harrington, of New York, who, in addition to her charms, had brought him a solid dowry.
Even at the age of twenty- seven Austin Sloper had made his mark sufficiently to mitigate the anomaly of his having been chosen among a dozen suitors by a young woman of high fashion, who had ten thousand dollars of income and the most charming eyes in the island of Manhattan.
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