At the date of our visit he looked a hale, hearty, laughter-loving man of sixty. There was mirth in his gray eye, joviality, in the wink that twittered on his eyelid, saucy humor in his smile, and bon mot, wit, repartee, and rejoinder in every movement of his lips. His hair very thin, but of a silky brown, fell across his forehead, and when it curtained his eyes he would jerk back his head—this, too, at some telling crisis in a narrative when the particular action was just the exact finish required to make the story perfect. Mr. Lever’s teeth were all his own, and very brilliant, and, whether from habit or accident, he flashed them upon us in company with his wonderful eyes—a battery at once both powerful and irresistible. He spoke slowly at first, but warming to his work, and candying an idea in a short, contagious, musical laugh, his story told itself all too rapidly, and the light burned out with such a glare as to intensify the succeeding darkness. Like all good _raconteurs_, he addressed himself deferentially to his auditor in the beginning, and as soon as the fish was hooked, the attention enthralled, he would speak as if thinking aloud. Mr. Lever made great use of his hands, which were small and white and delicate as those of a woman. He made play with them—threw them up in ecstasy or wrung them in mournfulness, just as the action of the moment demanded. He did not require eyes or teeth with such a voice and such hands; they could tell and illustrate the workings of his brain. He was somewhat careless in his dress, but clung to the traditional high shirt-collar, merely compromising the unswerving stock of the Brummel period. “I stick to my Irish shoes,” he said, thrusting upwards about as uncompromising a “bit of leather” as we have ever set eyes on right under our nose, “and until a few years ago I got them from a descendant of the celebrated Count Lally, who cobbled at Letterkenny. There is no shoe in the world equal to the Irish brogue.” “You are ‘taking time by the forelock,’ as we say in the play,” said the writer, pointing to the rough copy of the _Cornhill Magazine_, in which the story was running. “Always at the heel of the hunt,” he replied. “This is the May number, and not corrected yet.” “I consider _Lord Kilgobbin_ as good as, if not better than, anything you have written.” There was unutterable sadness in his tone and gesture as he said, with a weary sigh: “Ah! I have been tilting the cask so long that the lees are coming out very muddy.” “Which of your novels do you like best?” was asked. “Well, my most careful work is _Sir Brook Fosbrooke_, but I prefer the _Dodd Family Abroad_, and all for the sake of Carry Dodd, who is my ideal of a pure, bright, charming Irish girl.” Further on: