as it went by, behaved towards it as does the
magnetic needle to the pole.

It was that of a tall gentleman, cheerfully, though
somewhat with ennui, enduring his nineteenth
winter. His long and slender face he wore smiling,
beneath an accurately cut plaster of dark hair
cornicing his forehead, a fashion followed by many
youths of that year. This perfect bang was shown
under a round black hat whose rim was so small as
almost not to be there at all; and the head was
supported by a waxy-white sea-wall of collar,
rising three inches above the blue billows of a puffed
cravat, upon which floated a large, hollow pearl.
His ulster, sporting a big cape at the shoulders,
and a tasselled hood over the cape, was of a rough
Scotch cloth, patterned in faint, gray-and-white
squares the size of baggage-checks, and it was so
long that the skirts trailed in the snow. His legs
were lost in the accurately creased, voluminous
garments that were the tailors' canny reaction
from the tight trousers with which the 'Eighties had
begun: they were, in color, a palish russet, broadly
striped with gray, and, in size, surpassed the milder
spirit of fashion so far as they permitted a liberal
knee action to take place almost without superficial
effect. Upon his feet glistened long shoes,
shaped, save for the heels, like sharp racing-shells;
these were partially protected by tan-colored low
gaiters with flat, shiny, brown buttons. In one