An Outcast; Or, Virtue and FaithAdams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
General
An Outcast; Or, Virtue and Faith
Adams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
Conduct of life -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Vice -- Fiction
He is a little old-maidish about his age, which for the last twenty
years has not got a day more than fifty-four. Being as sensitive of his
veracity as the State is of its dignity, we would not, either by
implication or otherwise, lay an impeachment at his door, but rather
charge the discrepancy to that sin (a treacherous memory) the legal
gentry find so convenient for their purposes when they knock down their
own positions. McArthur stood five feet eight exactly, when young, but
age has made him lean of person, and somewhat bent. His face is long and
corrugated; his expression of countenance singularly serious. A nose,
neither aquiline nor Grecian, but large enough, and long enough, and red
enough at the end, to make both; a sharp and curiously-projecting chin,
that threatens a meeting, at no very distant day, with his nasal organ;
two small, watchful blue eyes deep-set under narrow arches, fringed with
long gray lashes; a deeply-furrowed, but straight and contracted
forehead, and a shaggy red wig, poised upon the crown of his head, and,
reader, if you except the constant working of a heavy, drooping lower
lip, and the diagonal sight with which his eyes are favored, you have
his most prominent features. Fashion he holds in utter contempt, nor has
he the very best opinion in the world of our fashionable tailors, who
are grown so rich that they hold mortgages on the very best plantations
in the State, and offer themselves candidates for the Governorship.
Indeed, Mr. McArthur says, one of these knights of the goose, not long
since, had the pertinacity to imagine himself a great General. And to
show his tenacious adherence to the examples set by the State, he
dresses exactly as his grandfather's great-grandfather used to, in a
blue coat, with small brass buttons, a narrow crimpy collar, and tails
long enough and sharp enough for a clipper-ship's run. The periods when
he provided himself with new suits are so far apart that they formed
special episodes in his history; nevertheless there is always an air of
neatness about him, and he will spend much time arranging a dingy
ruffled shirt, a pair of gray trowsers, a black velvet waistcoat, cut in
the Elizabethan style, and a high, square shirt collar, into which his
head has the appearance of being jammed. This collar he ties with a
much-valued red and yellow Spittlefields, the ends of which flow over
his ruffle. Although the old man would not bring much at the
man-shambles, we set a great deal of store by him, and would not
exchange him for anything in the world but a regiment or two of heroic
secessionists. Indeed we are fully aware that nothing like him exists
beyond the highly perfumed atmosphere of our State. And to many other
curious accomplishments the old man adds that of telling fortunes. The
negroes seriously believe he has a private arrangement with the devil,
of whom he gets his wisdom, and the secret of propitiating the gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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