Excerpt from Men of Character The greater number of these Characters - or, rather, Sketches of Character - originally appeared some sixteen years ago. The incidents of each paper make no pretension to the construction of a complete story: they are rather presented as an endeavour often, too, a hardy, extravagant one - to illustrate certain moral and personal peculiarities of the heroes (heroes of fewest inches!) with little regard to the elaborate working out of the likeness. Indeed, Men of Character are little other than Men of Outlines pen - and - ink flourishes with, possibly, now and then some better trace of human similitude, and now, running into mere grotesque. Thus, job pippins is nothing more than the hero of accident. The plaything, and, finally, the prosperous man of worldly chance. Are there such men 2 Different readers may haply make different answers. With the writer, however, Job is somewhat of a favourite from the circumstance that whatever good spirits may be found in him, the sunshine was not reflected from the actual hour of his pen-and-ink parent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.