Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!
Our civility, England determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people. It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of that profession.
Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.
The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice--although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.
My ability to adapt has always stood out. I've been immersed in many worlds and have had the influence of many things in my upbringing so I'm familiar with so many styles of living, so many characters, so many life paths and its just easy to simulate for me.
Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is more infallible than that of the body. To imitate the style of another is said to be wearing a mask. However beautiful it may be, it is through its lifelessness insipid and intolerable, so that even the most ugly living face is more engaging.
The style is the man. Rather say the style is the way the man takes himself; and to be at all charming or even bearable, the way is almost rigidly prescribed. If it is with outer seriousness, it must be with inner humor. If it is with outer humor, it must be with inner seriousness. No other way will do.