Then it would occur to you that he must have been sitting still for
a considerable period. He was not stout--you might even have called
him slender; but the muscles about his cheeks and chin hung a little
loose from the bony framework, and his figure, shapely enough when
he stood upright, yielded in a sitting posture to the pressure of
the railway cushions. That indicated muscular tissue, once developed
by outdoor exercise, and subsequently deteriorated by sedentary
pursuits. The lines on his forehead suggested that he was now a
brain-worker of sorts.
Other lines showed plainly that, though his accessories were new,
the man, unlike his portmanteau, had knocked about the world, and
had got a good deal damaged in the process. The index and middle
fingers of the left hand were wanting. You argued, then, that he had
changed his trade more than once; while from the presence of two
vertical creases on either side of a large and rather fleshy mouth,
worn as it were by the pull of a bit, you further inferred that the
energy he must have displayed somewhere was a thing of will rather
than of temperament. He was a paradox, a rolling stone that had
unaccountably contrived to gather moss.
And then you fell to wondering how so magnificently mossy a person
came to be traveling third-class in his native country.
To all these problems, which did actually perplex the clergyman, his
fellow-passenger, he himself provided the answer.
He had taken out his gold watch with a critical air, and timed the
run from Liverpool to Crewe.
"Better service of trains than they used to have," he observed.
"Same old snorer of an engine, though."
"You seem to know the line."
"It's not the first time I've ridden by it; nor yet the first time
I've crossed the herring-pond."
"Are you making any stay in this country?"
"I am, sir."
He lapsed into meditation evidently not unpleasing; then he
continued: "When you've got a mother and two sisters that you
haven't seen for over fifteen years, naturally you're not in such a
particular durned hurry to get away."
"Your home is in America, I presume?"
"My home is in England. I've made my pile out there, sir, and I've
come to stay. Like to see the _Chicago Advertiser_? It may amuse
you."
The clergyman accepted the paper gratefully. It did amuse him. So
much so that he read aloud several paragraphs, among others the one
beginning "Stephen K. Lepper, Pork-packing Prince."
It was a second or two before the horror of the situation dawned on
him. That dawn must have been reflected on his face, for his
fellow-passenger began to snigger.
"Ah," said he, "you've tumbled to it. Sorry you spoke? Don't
apologize for smiling, sir. I can smile, myself, now; but the first
time I saw that paragraph it turned me pretty faint and green.
That's the way they do things out there. Of course," he added, "I
_had_ to be put in; but I'm no more like a prince than I'm like a
pork-packer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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