This
Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years,
or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful
specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover
in a lifetime's search. With his florid cheek, his compact
figure smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk
and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he
seemed--not young, indeed--but a kind of new contrivance of
Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no
business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually
re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous
quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting
out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a
clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal--and there was very
little else to look at--he was a most satisfactory object, from
the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and
his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all,
the delights which he had ever aimed at or conceived of. The
careless security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular
income, and with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of
removal, had no doubt contributed to make time pass lightly over
him.
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