Say, I didn't need more'n one glimpse to size him up for a freak. The Angora haircut was tag enough—reg'lar Elbert Hubbard thatch he was wearin', all fluffy and wavy, and just clearin' his coat collar. That and the artist's necktie, not to mention the eye glasses with the tortoise shell rims, put him in the self advertisin' class without his sayin' a word.
Outside of the frills, he wa'n't a bad lookin' chap, and sizable enough for a 'longshoreman, only you could tell by the lily white hands and the long fingernails that him and toil never got within speakin' distance.
"Wonder what particular brand of mollycoddle he is?" thinks I.
Now there wa'n't any call for me to put him through the catechism, just because he was headed for the same town I was; but somehow I had an itch to take a rise out of him. So I leans over and gets a peek at the book.
"Readin' po'try, eh?" says I, swallowin' a grin.
"Beg pardon?" says he, kind of shakin' himself together. "Yes, this is poetry—Swinburne, you know," and he slumps down again as if he'd said all there was to say.
But when I starts out to be sociable you can't head me off that way. "Like it?" says I.
"Why, yes," says he, "very much, indeed. Don't you?"
He thought he had me corked there; but I comes right back at him. "Nix!" says I. "Swinny's stuff always hit me as bein' kind of punk."
"Really!" says he, liftin' his eyebrows. "Perhaps you have been unfortunate in your selections. Now take this, from the Anactoria——"