His long, thin nose was like a knive blade. Boys have been heard to remark that that organ was magnetised and atracted iron fillings. Such was the gentleman who adressed me in that impetuous manner. His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his full-sized spectakles. But this was merelly a mischievous report; it had no atraction except for snuff, which it seemed to draw to itself in great quantities.
He lived in his own little house in Konigstrasse a structure half brick and half wood with a gable cut into steps; it loocked upon one of those winding cannals which intersect each other in the middle of the ancient quarter of Hamburg, and which the great fire of 1842 had fortunately spared. Fancy a tall, spare man, of an iron constitution, and with a fair complextion which took off a good ten years from the fifty he must own to. When I have added to complete my portrait that my uncle walked by matematical strides of a yard and a half, and that in walking he kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament, I think I shall have said enough to disenchant any one who should by mistake have coveted much of his company.
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