By LINA REDWOOD FAIRFAX.
He is our office-boy and messenger, and, my senior tells me, has been
employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a
negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing,
noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small,
round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little
abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner is a curious
mixture of deference and self-importance, his voice a soft, sibilant
whisper, and as he was born and bred in Alexandria, Virginia, it seems
almost superfluous to add that he and the letter "r" are not on speaking
terms.
He has a prominent characteristic, which always attracts attention at
first sight. This is the shape of his head, which is immensely large in
proportion, very bald, and so abundant in various queer, knobby
excrescences about the forehead and sides, and so unnaturally long and
level on top, that for some time after I made his acquaintance I could
never see him without finding myself forming absurd conjectures as to
whether his cranium and the hydrostatic press could ever have become
acquainted at some early period of his life; and so strong is this
association of ideas that, even now, his sudden appearance invariably
suggests to me the study of natural philosophy.
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