THE COMMISSIONER. 153 



caused his brawny and hairy chest to be exposed to view, 

 while a fringe of ravelled threads from their wrists usually 

 hung dangling over his fat, freckled, and dirty hands. It 

 was a complete puzzle to his acquaintances where he ob- 

 tained all the old hats he wore. That he changed his hats 

 frequently was evident, for none of them ever bore the 

 same shape for two days together ; their forms were mul- 

 titudinous, so Protean, as to defy description ; but it may 

 be said of them generally, that their outline was that 

 which might be expected of the hat of an Irishman, who 

 had been so well beaten on a wet day, in a fair, as to be 

 induced to sleep all night in a ditch. 



Though his head was white, and his face purple — like 

 a red cabbage in snow — he was, as Nathaniel Hawthorne 

 says "a wonderful specimen of winter green." With his 

 brisk and vigorous step and his hale and hearty aspect, he 

 seemed — not young indeed, but a new contrivance in the 

 shape of a man whom age and infirmity had no business 

 to touch. His voice and laugh had nothing of the tremu- 

 lous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance, they 

 came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock or 

 the blast of a clarion. 



Looking at him merely as an animal, he was a very 

 satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and 

 wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, old as he 

 was, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the pleasures which he had 

 ever aimed at or conceived. The careless security of his 



