in black; even his shoes polished,—a rare and dandyish indulgence in San Francisco, before the French bootblacks inaugurated the sumptuary vanity of Day and Martin's lustre on the stoop of the California Exchange, and made it a necessity no less than diurnal ablutions; a well-preserved English hat on his head, which, when he with a somewhat formal air removed it, discovered thin black locks, beginning to part company with the crown of his head. In his large, brown eyes an expression of moving melancholy was established; a nervous tremulousness almost twitched his refined lips, which, to my surprise, were not concealed by the universal moustache,—indeed, the smooth chin and symmetrically trimmed mutton-chop whiskers, in the orthodox English mode, showed that the man shaved. His nose, slightly aquiline, was delicately cut, and his nostrils fine; and he had small feet and hands, the latter remarkably white and tender. As he stood before me, he was never at rest for an instant, but changed his support from one leg to the other,—they were slight as a young boy's—and fumbled, as it were, with his feet; as I have seen a distinguished medical lecturer, of Boston, gesticulate with his toes. He played much with his whiskers, too, and his fingers were often in his hair—as a fidgety and vulgar man would bite his nails. From all of which I gathered that my new acquaintance was an intensely nervous person,—very sensitive, of course, and no doubt irritable.
He was accompanied by a—female, much taller than he, and as stalwart as dear woman can be; an especially common-looking person, bungled as to her dress, which was tawdry-fine, unseasonable for the place aswell as time, inappropriate to herself, inharmonious in its composition, and every way most vilely put on; a clumsy and, as I presently perceived, a loud person, whose face, still showing traces of the coarse but decided beauty it must once have possessed, fell far short of compensating for the complete gracelessness of her presence.
Her eyes had a bibulous quality, and the bright redness of her nose vied vulgarly with the rusty redness of her cheeks. I suspected her complexion of potations, but charitably let it off with--beer; for she was, at first glance, English. As she jerked off her flaunting bonnet, and dragged off her loud shawl, saluting me, as she did so, with an overdone obeisance, she said, "This San Fanfrisko"--why would she, how could she, always twist the decent name of the metropolis of the Pacific into such an absurd shape?--"was a norrid 'ole; she happealed to the gentleman,"--meaning me,--"didn't 'e find it a norrid 'ole, habsolutely hawful?" And then she went clattering among tinware and crockery, and snubbed the gentlemanly boy in a sort of tender Billingsgate.
While she was thus gracefully employed, the agonized artist, his face suffused with blushes and fairly ghastly with an enforced smile, was painfully struggling to abstract himself, by changing the places of things, shifting the position of his easel, prying in a lost way into lumbered corners, and pretending to be in search of something, --ingenious, but unable to disguise his chagrin. He pranced with his legs, and tumbled his hair, and twitched at his whiskers more than ever, as he said,--
"My dear," (and the boy had called her Mamma; so, then, it must be a fancy sketch, after all,) "my dear, no doubt the gentleman is more a cosmopolite than yourself, and blessed with more facility in adapting himself to circumstances."
"You know, Madam," I came to his assistance, "we Americans have a famous trick of living and enjoying a little in advance, of 'going ahead' of the hour, as it were. We find in San Francisco rather what it promises to be than what it is, and we take it at its word."
"Oh, pray, don't mention Americans! I positively 'ate the hodious people. I confess I 'ave a hinsurmountable prejudice hagainst the race; you are not haware that I am Hinglish. I think I might endure heven San Fa
