He wore a faded straw hat, which
looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite its angularity
of outline and its wanness, had that expression of complacency which often
relieves from pathos the countenances of harmlessly demented people. His
hair was gray, but his somewhat formidable looking moustache was still
dark. He carried an unadorned walking-stick and under his left arm was what
a journalistic eye immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man's
aspect of extreme poverty, I deduced that his manuscripts were never
accepted.
As he passed the cashier's desk, he stopped, lowered his body, not by
stooping in the usual way, but by bending his knees, and with a quick sweep
of his eyes by way of informing himself whether or not he was observed, he
picked up a cigar stump that some one had dropped there.
Then he walked with a rather shambling but self-important gait to the table
next mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and sat down upon
it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the limited bill of
fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in his ordering, through a
hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl of oatmeal.
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