Spectators

All the springs of his life were kept oiled by a quiet humor, which sometimes broke out in playful sparkles.... He had a placid way of amusing himself with the quaint and picturesque side of life....

There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling in the affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It does not, of course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of human interest or sympathy—nay, it often exists most completely with people of the tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he who possesses it needs never to be at a loss for interest or amusement; he is always a spectator at a tragedy or comedy, and sees in real life a humor and a pathos beyond anything he can find shadowed in books.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island.