Leaning against the counter at one corner, and fixing his eyes
deliberately and unmovingly upon us, was a man about the age of fifty,
dressed in a costume of singular fashion, apparently pretending to an
antiquity of taste, correspondent with that of the material. This person
wore a large cocked-hat, set rather jauntily on one side,--a black coat,
which seemed an omnium gatherum of all abominations that had come in its
way for the last ten years, and which appeared to advance equal claims
(from the manner it was made and worn), to the several dignities of the
art military and civil, the arma and the toga:--from the neck of the
wearer hung a blue ribbon of amazing breadth, and of a very surprising
assumption of newness and splendour, by no means in harmony with the
other parts of the tout ensemble; this was the guardian of an eye-glass
of block tin, and of dimensions correspondent with the size of the
ribbon. Stuck under the right arm, and shaped fearfully like a sword,
peeped out the hilt of a very large and sturdy looking stick, "in war a
weapon, in peace a support."

The features of the man were in keeping with his garb; they betokened an
equal mixture of the traces of poverty, and the assumption of the
dignities reminiscent of a better day. Two small, light-blue eyes were
shaded by bushy, and rather imperious brows, which lowered from under the
hat, like Cerberus out of his den. These, at present, wore the dull,
fixed stare of habitual intoxication, though we were not long in
discovering that they had not yet forgotten to sparkle with all the
quickness, and more than the roguery of youth. His nose was large,
prominent, and aristocratic; nor would it have been ill formed, had not
some unknown cause pushed it a little nearer towards the left ear, than
would have been thought, by an equitable judge of beauty, fair to the
pretensions of the right. The lines in the countenance were marked as if