NEARLY.
RESTLESS, erratic being, with a pair of shifting, twinkling eyes; a dark face, whose contour preserved itself, notwithstanding that its hirsute outline varied from time to time from full beard to mere flowing mustache, an embodied selfish spirit— Bernard Jacobson seemed a man worth knowing, and when known best avoided. An uncertain temperament, he would change from grave to gay on the instant; unstable in all things, and unreliable in all that he undertook. He had crossed Europe in a family bundle of misery, and a wayward, hungry childhood had killed the germs of faith and orthodoxy that his father had sought to plant in him. Within a narrow circle, he was eternally roving; in the club he would, during the evening, flit from chair to chair, engaging each and every member in conversation; throwing into the general debate some passable observation, but for the most part darting hither and thither, ready to accept an invitation to supper when his pockets were empty, living on the fat of the land when they were full. None took him seriously, nor did he ask to be so taken. A gift of omnipresence, most handy in an institution in which the members attended largely on themselves, caused him to be tolerated; and he sought nothing beyond that. His bonhommie, and a sympathy for suffering were his redeeming features.
He knew, though he never had the patience to examine anything carefully, the nature of the sediment in the human sewer of a great city, and he saw what made the ensilage; so that, sometimes when his rapid tongue chose the method of common speech, you heard a voice
that trembled with the passion of human wrong and suffering.
Down deep in him was a perverse soul, seared with the “world pain,” though as a rule it only permitted itself voice in feverish ejaculations, curses and condem- nations, which, uttered heedless of the situation, frequently wrecked the siender promises of a career. Yes, Jacobson was to be avoided, his restlessness, unstabili- ty and unreliability— without the redeeming feature of real genius—demanded it; but no one ever did it. There was an echo of a child’s simple glee in his laughter that somehow opened portals that were supposed to be closed upon him forever. He had a certain natural cunning, but no forethought. His temper, rather than his brain, was responsible for the mischief that he sometimes wroueht.
Naturally, Jacobson was poor. He had never learnt enough of any one art or science, profession or calling, to be able to hold his own in a competitive world. Smartness now and then carried him to dizzy heights, but inevitably he came down, dazed for a moment, and then bouyant again. He was effervescent, excitable, but he never cursed fate, and looked at the blackest cloud with the eyes of an optimist. In a way he had no illusions—his hopes were fleeting; he had tested fate too often to feel confident of the future, and was communicative to all but an old mother, who often gave him shelter and from whom he religiously kept all that he suffered, and to whom he lied delightfully concerning his position even when his creditors were pressing him so close that nothing but a miracle could keep him from a debtor's