Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Business with Bokes

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BUSINESS WITH BOKES.
We are told that we may know men by their friends. But suppose they have no friends? How is it possible in that desperate case to arrive at ​a correct estimation of our fellow-creatures? Well, I think that we may know men by their waistcoats, by their shirt-collars, by their whiskers, by their books, by their furniture, by their surroundings generally.
Now, Tom Lupthorpe, in connection with whom I am about to relate certain facts, had friends. For instance, Budder was one of them: Crickson was another: I was a third. No doubt, therefore, it was open to the critical observer by taking account of Budder, and Crickson, and myself, or somehow by adding us together, and dividing the total by three, to regard the result, or average, so obtained, as a fair valuation of Tom Lupthorpe. But I think that an estimate of equal correctness might have been reached by a less complicated method. I may be led to this opinion, perhaps, by an inclination to shrink from arithmetical effort, which, as it is purely natural and constitutional, and quite out of my control, I have no hesitation in avowing. By no process of calculation could I ever persuade a sum of addition, however s

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