as he goes, makes play with his unfamiliar cane only to be
horror-stricken at the flourishings so evoked of his wild
gloves; and at last, fairly crawling with the eyes he feels all
over him, he must draw forth his handkerchief and shelter
behind it, poor man, in the dishonourable affectation of a
sneeze!

Piquant contrast to these obsessions, the well-known expression
of Talbot Potter lifted him above the crowd to such high
serenity his face might have been that of a young Pope, with a
dash of Sydney Carton. His glance fixed itself, in its benign
detachment, upon the misty top of the Flatiron, far down the
street, and the more frequent the plainly visible recognitions
among the north-bound people, the less he seemed aware of them.
And yet, whenever the sieving current of pedestrians brought
momentarily face to face with him a girl or woman, apparently
civilized and in the mode, who obviously had never seen him
before and seemed not to care if it should be her fate never to
repeat the experience, Talbot Potter had a certain desire. If
society had established a rule that all men must instantly obey
and act upon every fleeting impulse, Talbot Potter would have
taken that girl or woman by the shoulders and said to her:
"What's the matter with you!"

At Forty-second Street he crossed over, proceeded to the middle
of the block, and halted dreamily on the edge of the pavement,
his back to the crowd. His face was toward the Library, with
its two annoyed pet lions, typifying learning, and he appeared
to study the great building. One or two of the passersby had
seen him standing on that self-same spot before;--in fact, he