Interested anew, I followed this man of contradictory
impulses into the room toward which he led me.
The time has now come for a more careful description of this peculiar
man. Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which
suggests the scholar. Yet he had not the scholar's eye. On the
contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not
convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an
uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze. He wore his
iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy,
as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him
wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street
urchins. On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the
epithet of Uncle David among them, despite his aristocratic
connections and his gentlemanlike bearing. His clothes formed no
exception to the general air of individuality which marked him. They
were of different cut from those of other men, and in this as in many
other ways he was a law to himself; notably so in the following
instance: He kept one day of the year religiously, and kept it
always in the same way. Long years before, he had been blessed with
a wife who both understood and loved him. He had never forgotten
this fact, and once a year, presumably on the anniversary of her
death, it was his custom to go to the cemetery where she lay and to
spend the whole day under the shadow of the stone he had raised to
her memory.
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