He was evidently a shoemaker. There was
a smell of leather about him, and his hands and face were grimy. He
had a slightly turned-up nose, smallish eyes, half hidden under very
black eyebrows, and his lips were thin and straight. His voice was
exceedingly high-pitched, and had something creaking in it like the
sound of an ill-greased axle. He spoke with emphasis, but not quite
like an Englishman, was fond of alliteration, and often, in the
middle of a sentence, paused to search for a word which pleased him.
Having found it, the remainder of the sentence was poised and cast
from him like a dart. His style was a curious mixture of foreign
imperfection and rhetoric--a rhetoric, however, by no means affected.
It might have been so in another person, but it was not so in him.
"Going east?" said he.
"Yes."
"If you want company, I'll walk with you. What do you think of the
Friends?"
Zachariah, it will be borne in mind, although he was a Democrat, had
never really seen the world. He belonged to a religious sect. He
believed in the people, it is true, but it was a people of
Cromwellian Independents. He purposely avoided the company of men
who used profane language, and never in his life entered a tavern.
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