If, then, you feel that you know the town well enough to be admitted
into the inner life and movement of it, walk down this June afternoon
half way down the Main Street--or, if you like, half way up from the
wharf--to where Mr. Smith is standing at the door of his hostelry.
You will feel as you draw near that it is no ordinary man that you
approach. It is not alone the huge bulk of Mr. Smith (two hundred
and eighty pounds as tested on Netley's scales). It is not merely his
costume, though the chequered waistcoat of dark blue with a flowered
pattern forms, with his shepherd's plaid trousers, his grey spats and
patent-leather boots, a colour scheme of no mean order. Nor is it
merely Mr. Smith's finely mottled face. The face, no doubt, is a
notable one,--solemn, inexpressible, unreadable, the face of the
heaven-born hotel keeper. It is more than that. It is the strange
dominating personality of the man that somehow holds you captive. I
know nothing in history to compare with the position of Mr. Smith
among those who drink over his bar, except, though in a lesser
degree, the relation of the Emperor Napoleon to the Imperial Guard.

When you meet Mr. Smith first you think he looks like an over-dressed
pirate. Then you begin to think him a character. You wonder at his
enormous bulk. Then the utter hopelessness of knowing what Smith is
thinking by merely looking at his features gets on your mind and
makes the Mona Lisa seem an open book and the ordinary human
countenance as superficial as a puddle in the sunlight. After you
have had a drink in Mr. Smith's bar, and he has called you by your
Christian name, you realize that you are dealing with one of the
greatest minds in the hotel business.

Take, for instance, the big sign that sticks out into the street