mystery--yet which, perhaps, need not have been a mystery, had any one
thought it worth while to make systematic inquiry in reference to his
previous life, his education, even his native land--assisted the
impression which his peculiarities were calculated to make. He was
evidently not a New-Englander, nor a native of any part of these
Western shores. His speech was apt to be oddly and uncouthly idiomatic,
and even when classical in its form was emitted with a strange, rough
depth of utterance, that came from recesses of the lungs which we
Yankees seldom put to any use. In person, he did not look like one of
us; a broad, rather short personage, with a projecting forehead, a red,
irregular face, and a squab nose; eyes that looked dull enough in their
ordinary state, but had a faculty, in conjunction with the other
features, which those who had ever seen it described as especially ugly
and awful. As regarded dress, Doctor Grimshawe had a rough and careless
exterior, and altogether a shaggy kind of aspect, the effect of which
was much increased by a reddish beard, which, contrary to the usual
custom of the day, he allowed to grow profusely; and the wiry
perversity of which seemed to know as little of the comb as of the
razor.

We began with calling the grim Doctor an elderly personage; but in so
doing we looked at him through the eyes of the two children, who were
his intimates, and who had not learnt to decipher the purport and value
of his wrinkles and furrows and corrugations, whether as indicating
age, or a different kind of wear and tear. Possibly--he seemed so
aggressive and had such latent heat and force to throw out when
occasion called--he might scarcely have seemed middle-aged; though here
again we hesitate, finding him so stiffened in his own way, so little
fluid, so encrusted with passions and humors, that he must have left
his youth very far behind him; if indeed he ever had any.