ke?

As the heat of the room began to tell upon him, he threw aside his
outer garment, and hung up his hat, thereby discovering a velvet
jacket and a very low-cut shirt, with unstarched rolling collar, and
sailor's knot of pale green Liberty silk. His long hair, of a faded,
dusty brown, was brushed straight back from his forehead, and
plastered down upon his scalp, in such wise as to lend him a
misleading effect of baldness. He wore a drooping brown moustache, and
a lustreless brown beard, trimmed to an Elizabethan point. His skin
was sallow; his eyes were big, wide apart, of an untransparent buttony
brilliancy, and in colour dully blue. Taken for all in all, his face,
deprived of the adventitious aids of long hair and Elizabethan beard,
would have been peculiarly spiritless and insignificant, but from the
complacency that shone like an unguent in every line of it, as well
as from the studied picturesqueness of his costume, it was manifest
that he posed as a unique and interesting character, a being
mysterious and romantic, melancholy and rarely gifted--like the artist
in a bad play.

Artist, indeed, of some description, I told myself, he must infallibly
be reckoned. What mere professional man or merchant would have the
heart to render his person thus conspicuous? And the hypothesis that
might have disposed of him as a _model_ was excluded by the freshness
of his clothes. A poet, painter, sculptor, possibly an actor or
musician--anyhow, something to which the generic name of artist,
soiled with all ignoble use, could more or less flatteringly be
applied--I made sure he was; an ornament of our own English-speaking
race, moreover, proclaimed such by the light of intelligence that
played upon his features as he followed our noisy conversation; and,
at a guess, two or three-and-thirty years of age.

'Anybody know the duffer with the hair?'

This question, started by Charles K. Smith, of Battle Creek, Michigan,
U.S.A., and commonly called in the Latin Quarter by his sobriquet of
_Chalks_, went our rounds in an undertone; and everybody answered,
'No.'

'What is it? Can it talk? 'Pears like it can hear and catch on,' was
Chalks's next remark. 'Shall we work the growler on it?'

The process termed by Chalks 'working the growler' was of ancient
institution in the Cafe des Souris; and I believe it is not unknown in
other seats of learning--a custom handed down from generation to
generation of students, which, like politen