feet round the sockets; a knotty squab nose coming down over his
moustache; a miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages
long ago; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves; and, without
hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. Even in these rags and
tatters, the man twinkled all over with impudence like a piece of
sham jewellery; and I have heard him offer a situation to one of
his fellow-passengers with the air of a lord. Nothing could
overlie such a fellow; a kind of base success was written on his
brow. He was then in his ill days; but I can imagine him in
Congress with his mouth full of bombast and sawder. As we moved in
the same circle, I was brought necessarily into his society. I do
not think I ever heard him say anything that was true, kind, or
interesting; but there was entertainment in the man's demeanour.
You might call him a half-educated Irish Tigg.

Our Russian made a remarkable contrast to this impossible fellow.
Rumours and legends were current in the steerages about his
antecedents. Some said he was a Nihilist escaping; others set him
down for a harmless spendthrift, who had squandered fifty thousand
roubles, and whose father had now despatched him to America by way
of penance. Either tale might flourish in security; there was no
contradiction to be feared, for the hero spoke not one word of
English. I got on with him lumberingly enough in broken German,
and learned from his own lips that he had been an apothecary. He
carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-book, and
remarked that it did not do her justice. The cut of his head stood
out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness.
The first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado; but
although the features, to our Western eyes, had a barbaric and
unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. It was large