Extraordinary creature. Its
belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the table-top, on which
table-top rested several enormous tomes similar to those employed by the
recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or two, innumerable
pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking papers. The person
was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply cut to afford a
promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that extremely thin black
material which occasionally is affected by clerks and dentists and more
often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an honest German jowl, or even
upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon one now. Such a round fat red
pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded me only and immediately of huge
meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger,
and Jacob Wirth's (once upon a time) brachwurst. Such pinlike pink merry
eyes as made me think of Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge
reddish hands as might have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche
Kuechen on 13th street. I gasped with pleasurable relief.
Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the
aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian's jacket (not to mention a
very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his
copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily
emanating from his lofty and responsible office.
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