When he had come in, he had thrown
his overcoat on a chair that stood near the table in the centre of the
room and had dropped his hat upon his coat. It had slipped to the
floor and now lay there--a low, soft black hat of a kind formerly much
worn by young Southerners of the countryside,--especially on occasions
when there was a spur of heat in their mood and going,--much the same
kind that one sees on the heads of students in Rome in winter; light,
warm, shaping itself readily to breezes from any quarter, to be doffed
or donned as comfortable and negligible. It suggested that he had been
a country boy in the land, still belonged to the land, and as a man
kept to its out-of-door habits and fashions. His shoes, one of which
you saw at each side of his chair, were especially well made for
rough-going feet to tramp in during all weathers.
A sack suit of dark blue serge somehow helped to withdraw your
interpretation of him from farm life to the arts or the
professions. The scrupulous air of his shirt collar, showing against
the clear-hued flesh at the back of his neck, and the Van Dyck-like
edge of the shirt cuff, defining his powerful wrist and hand,
strengthened the notion that he belonged to the arts or to the
professions.
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