User:Polymathic Darko

He is of what

is called the old school--a phrase generally meaning any school

that seems never to have been young--and wears knee-breeches tied

with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his

black clothes and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted,

is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to any

glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses when

not professionaly consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless but

quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country houses

and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashionable

intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and where half

the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" He

receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with

the rest of his knowledge.