said the Englishman with an expression of curiosity, which a close observer would have been astonished at discovering in his phlegmatic countenance.

This is the mode in which they manage these things, and succeed in Eastern climes, where there are grave and phlegmatic persons who care very little for the questions of time in conjunctures of importance.''

As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say--he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational--I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant's.