Many passengers put their heads to the window, and among the rest an old
gentleman on whom I willingly dwell, for I am nearly done with him now,
and (in the whole course of the present narrative) I am not in the least
likely to meet another character so decent. His name is immaterial, not
so his habits. He had passed his life wandering in a tweed suit on the
continent of Europe; and years of Galignani's Messenger having at length
undermined his eyesight, he suddenly remembered the rivers of Assyria
and came to London to consult an oculist. From the oculist to the
dentist, and from both to the physician, the step appears inevitable;
presently he was in the hands of Sir Faraday, robed in ventilating cloth
and sent to Bournemouth; and to that domineering baronet (who was his
only friend upon his native soil) he was now returning to report. The
case of these tweedsuited wanderers is unique. We have all seen them
entering the table d'hote (at Spezzia, or Grdtz, or Venice) with a
genteel melancholy and a faint appearance of having been to India and
not succeeded. In the offices of many hundred hotels they are known by
name; and yet, if the whole of this wandering cohort were to disappear
tomorrow, their absence would be wholly unremarked.
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