Page:Gissing - The Unclassed, vol. I, 1884.djvu/58

 Abraham was typical of that class of men in whom, though they are utterly devoid of sentiment, the lusts of the flesh rule strongly. And he had at no time crucified his appetite. He was acquisitive, but not miserly; absolute confidence in his own powers had always held him free from the pressure of miserable economies. The history of his amours de jeunesse, to say nothing of those which had succeeded upon the death of his wife, would supply an instructive, though perhaps scarcely edifying, chapter. In another man such a life might have been called dissipated; to Abraham Woodstock the word would in no sense apply. Never for a moment did he lose his sense of the fit adjustment of means and ends; never did he throw away a halfpenny. At his present age of three-score his habits had not greatly changed, except that he was perhaps a trifle more fastidious than he had been twenty years back. He felt as yet none of the forebodings of old age, and talked of another twenty years to be spent in very much the same way.

This house in St. John Street Road he had