Nature had not been bountiful to Mr. Bruce in externals. He was very
tall, with round shoulders, long, lean limbs, large feet and hands, and
immense joints. There was a good deal of strength about him, but it
wanted concentration and arrangement. His features were rather
exaggerated and coarse in outline, with the high cheek-bones common on
the north side of the Tweed; his hair of an unhappy vacillating color
that could not make its mind up to be red; and his eyes, that rarely met
you fairly, of a light cold gray. About the mouth, in particular, there
was a very unpleasant expression, alternately vicious and cunning.
I do not believe that his intimates, if he had any, in their wildest
moments of conviviality, ever called him "Jack;" nor his mother, in his
earliest childhood, "Johnnie." Plain "John Bruce" was written
uncompromisingly in every line of his face; just the converse of
Forrester, whom old maids of rigid virtue, after seeing him twice, were
irresistibly impelled to speak of as "Charley."
I wish some profound psychologist would give us his theory on the
question of "The influence of nomenclature on disposition and destiny."
It is all very well to ask, "What's in a name?" I think there is a great
deal; and that our sponsors have much to answer for in indulging their
baptismal fancies.
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