The rim of his old brown hat seemed ready to drop down on his shoulders at a moment’s notice, and the sides, having dissolved all connection with the crown, presented at the top a jagged circumference, festooned here and there with locks of light brown hair, while, to keep the whole fabric from falling to pieces of its own weight, it was bound round with a piece of string in lieu of a hat-band. His hair hung all over his shoulders in large straight flat locks, just as if a handkerchief had been nailed to the top of his head and then torn into shreds, and a long beard of the same pattern fringed a face as brown as a mahogany table. His shirt had once been red flannel--of course it was flannel yet, what remained of it--but it was in a most dilapidated condition. Half-way down to his elbows hung some shreds, which led to the belief that at one time he had possessed a pair of sleeves; but they seemed to have been removed by the action of time and the elements, which had also been busy with other parts of the garment, and had, moreover, changed its original scarlet to different shades of crimson and purple. There was enough of his shirt left almost to meet a pair of--not trousers, but still less mentionable articles, of the same material as the shirt, and in the same stage of decomposition. He must have had trousers once on a time, but I suppose he had worn them out; and I could not help thinking what extraordinary things they must have been on the morning when he came to the conclusion that they were not good enough to wear. I daresay he would have put them on if he could, but perhaps they were so full of holes that he did not know which to get into. His boots at least had reached this point, and to acknowledge that they had been boots was as much as a conscientious man could say for them. They were more holes than leather, and had no longer any title to the name of boots. He was a man between thirty and forty, and, notwithstanding his rags, there was nothing in his appearance at all dirty or repulsive; on the contrary, he had a very handsome, prepossessing face, with an air about him which at once gave the idea that he had been used to polite society. I was, consequently, not surprised at the style of his address. He talked with me for some time, and I found him a most amusing and gentlemanly fellow. He was a German doctor, but it was hard to detect any foreign accent in his pronunciation.