Appearance: that of a lesser clerk. Weight: feather. Nose: stub. Eyes: apologetic. Teeth: obvious. Figure: brief. Manner: diffident. Nature: kind. Disposition: amiable but subdued.
Conspicuous vices: none.
Conspicuous virtues: none.
Distinguishing marks: none.
Tidbury was no Napoleon. He was aware of this, and so was everybody in the hat company, including, unfortunately, Titus Spingle, the president, who felt that he knew a thing or two about Bonapartes because he had once been referred to in a straw-hat trade paper as the Napoleon of Hatdom.
Mildly, as he did everything else in life, Tidbury admired, indeed almost envied Mr. Spingle's silk shirts, which customarily suggested an explosion in a paint factory. But such sartorial grandeur, Tidbury felt, was not for him. He stuck to plain white shirts, dark blue ties and pepper-and-salt suits. The pepper-and-salt suit was invented for Tidbury Epps.
Tidbury worked diligently and even cheerfully on a high stool and a low salary, copying neat little black figures into big black books. The salary and the stool were the same Tidbury had been given when he first came to New York from Calais, Maine, ten years before.
It probably never entered his head, as he bent over his columns of digits that crisp fall morning, that in their sanctum of real mahogany and Spanish leather his employers were discussing him.
"Whitaker has quit," announced Mr. Blatter, who acted as sales manager.
Mr. Spingle's acre of face, pink and dimpled from much good living, showed concern.