“Well—” hesitating for an instant, and then speaking boldly and sharply, “I wanted to know if you could not trust me for a few papers?”
“I suppose so; walk in to the light.”
I shall never forget the impression Dobbs made on me that night, as we two walked in from the starlight to the glare of the gas-burners.
A BLAZE OF HONESTY.
As I have said before, he had a tall and striking figure. His face was ugly. He was ungraceful, ragged, and uncouth. Yet there was a splendid glow of honesty that shone from every feature, and challenged your admiration. It was not that cheap honesty that suffuses the face of your average honest man; but a vivid burst of light that, fed by principle, sent its glow from the heart. It was not the passive honesty that is the portion of men who have no need to steal, but the triumphant honesty that has grappled with poverty, with disease, with despair, and conquered the whole devil’s brood of temptation; the honesty that has been sorely tried, the honesty of martyrdom; the honesty of heroism. He was the honestest man I ever knew.
THE PATHOS OF INCONGRUITY.
There was one feature of his dress that was pathetic in its uniqueness. He wore a superb swallow-tail dress-coat; a gorgeous coat, which was doubtless christened at some happy wedding (his father’s, I suppose); had walked side by side with dainty laces; been swept through stately quadrilles, pressed upon velvet, and to-night came to me upon a shirtless back, and asked “trust” for a half-dozen newspapers.
It had that seedy, threadbare look which makes broadcloth, after its first season, the most melancholy dress that sombre ingenuity ever invented. It was scrupulously brushed and buttoned close up to the chin, whether to hide the lack of a shirt, I never in the course of six months’ intimate acquaintance had the audacity to inquire. In the sleeve, on which rosy wrists had, in days gone by, laid in loving confidence, a shriveled arm hung loosely, and from its outlet three decrepit fingers driveled. His hat was old, and fell around his ears.
His breeches, of a whitish material, which had the peculiarity of leaving the office perfectly dirty one evening and coming back pure and clean the next morning. What amount of midnight scrubbing this required from my hero Dobbs, I will not attempt to tell. Neither will I guess how he became possessed of that wonderful coat. Whether in the direst days of the poverty which had caught him, his old mother, pitying her boy’s rags, had fished it up from the bottom of a trunk where, with mayhaps an orange-wreath or a bit of white veil, it had lain for years, the last token of a happy bridal night, and, baptizing it with her tears, had thrown it around his bare shoulders, I cannot tell. All I know is, that taken in connection with the rest of his attire, it was startling in its contrast; and that I honored the brave dignity with which he buttoned this magnificent coat against his honest rags, and strode out to meet the jeers of the world and work out a living.