Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged thoroughfares of the
metropolis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be supposed
to have dropped from the stars, if there were any star in the Heavens
dull enough to be suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creeping
along with a scared air, as though bewildered and a little frightened
by the noise and bustle.
This old man is always a little old man. If he
were ever a big old man, he has shrunk into a little old man; if he were
always a little old man, he has dwindled into a less old man. His coat
is a colour, and cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period.
Clearly, it was not made for him, or for any individual mortal. Some
wholesale contractor measured Fate for five thousand coats of such
quality, and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of a
long unfinished line of many old men. It has always large dull metal
buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a
thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never adapted
itself to the shape of his poor head.
His coarse shirt and his coarse
neckcloth have no more individuality than his coat and hat; they have
the same character of not being his--of not being anybody's. Yet this
old man wears these clothes with a certain unaccustomed air of being
dressed and elaborated for the public ways; as though he passed the
greater part of his time in a nightcap and gown. And so, like the
country mouse in the second year of a famine, come to see the town
mouse, and timidly threading his way to the town-mouse's lodging through
a city of cats, this old man passes in the streets.
Sometimes, on holidays towards evening, he will be seen to walk with a
slightly increased infirmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a moist
and marshy light. Then the little old man is drunk. A very small
measure will overset him; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs with
a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance--chance acquaintance
very often--has warmed up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the
consequence will be the lapse of a longer time than usual before he
shall pass again. For the little old man is going home to the Workhouse;
and on his good behaviour they do not let him out often (though methinks
they might, considering the few years he has before him to go out in,
under the sun); and on his bad behaviour they shut him up closer than
ever in a grove of two score and nineteen more old men, every one of
whom smells of all the others.