His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a
fell of stiff yellow hair; they were hard as wooden mallets, strong
as vises, the hands of the old-time car-boy. Often he dispensed with
forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger.
His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient, like that of the
carnivora.
McTeague's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there
was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught
horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.
When he opened his "Dental Parlors," he felt that his life was a
success, that he could hope for nothing better. In spite of the name,
there was but one room. It was a corner room on the second floor over
the branch post-office, and faced the street. McTeague made it do for
a bedroom as well, sleeping on the big bed-lounge against the wall
opposite the window. There was a washstand behind the screen in the
corner where he manufactured his moulds. In the round bay window were
his operating chair, his dental engine, and the movable rack on which
he laid out his instruments. Three chairs, a bargain at the second-hand
store, ranged themselves against the wall with military precision
underneath a steel engraving of the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, which
he had bought because there were a great many figures in it for the
money.
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