Many passengers put their heads to the window, and among the rest an old

gentleman on whom I willingly dwell, for I am nearly done with him now,

and (in the whole course of the present narrative) I am not in the least

likely to meet another character so decent. His name is immaterial, not

so his habits. He had passed his life wandering in a tweed suit on the

continent of Europe; and years of Galignani's Messenger having at length

undermined his eyesight, he suddenly remembered the rivers of Assyria

and came to London to consult an oculist. From the oculist to the

dentist, and from both to the physician, the step appears inevitable;

presently he was in the hands of Sir Faraday, robed in ventilating cloth

and sent to Bournemouth; and to that domineering baronet (who was his

only friend upon his native soil) he was now returning to report. The

case of these tweedsuited wanderers is unique. We have all seen them

entering the table d'hote (at Spezzia, or Grdtz, or Venice) with a

genteel melancholy and a faint appearance of having been to India and

not succeeded. In the offices of many hundred hotels they are known by

name; and yet, if the whole of this wandering cohort were to disappear

tomorrow, their absence would be wholly unremarked. How much more, if

only one--say this one in the ventilating cloth--should vanish! He had

paid his bills at Bournemouth; his worldly effects were all in the van

in two portmanteaux, and these after the proper interval would be

sold as unclaimed baggage to a Jew; Sir Faraday's butler would be a

half-crown poorer at the year's end, and the hotelkeepers of Europe

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