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The Enormous Room by E. E. (Edward Estlin) Cummings
page 126 of 322 (39%)

Then, too, the Schoolmaster.

A little fragile old man. His trousers were terrifically too big for him.
When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers did the
most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the _cour_,
with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket--the stem (which
looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding therefrom--his
three-sizes too big collar would leap out so as to make his wizened neck
appear no thicker than the white necktie which flowed upon his two-sizes
too big shirt. He always wore a coat which reached below his knees, which
coat, with which knees, perhaps someone had once given him. It had huge
shoulders which sprouted, like wings, on either side of his elbows when
he sat in The Enormous Room quietly writing at a tiny three-legged table,
a very big pen walking away with his weak bony hand. His too big cap had
a little button on top which looked like the head of a nail; and
suggested that this old doll had once lost its poor grey head and had
been repaired by means of tacking its head upon its neck, where it should
be and properly belonged. Of what hideous crime was this being suspected?
By some mistake he had three moustaches, two of them being eyebrows. He
used to teach school in Alsace-Lorraine, and his sister is there. In
speaking to you his kind face is peacefully reduced to triangles. And his
tie buttons on every morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by
his celluloid collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried
about the world. At eating time he looks sidelong as he stuffs soup into
stiff lips. There are two holes where cheeks might have been. Lessons
hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he, by any
chance, tell the children that there are such monstrous things as peace
and good will ... a corrupter of youth, no doubt ... he is altogether
incapable of anger, wholly timid and tintinabulous. And he had always
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