ym, the colossal Pym, that vast and rolling figure, who never
knew what he was to write about until he dipped grandly, an author in
such demand that on the foggy evening which starts our story his
publishers have had his boots removed lest he slip thoughtlessly round
the corner before his work is done, as was the great man's way--shall
we begin with him, or with Tommy, who has just arrived in London,
carrying his little box and leading a lady by the hand? It was Pym, as
we are about to see, who in the beginning held Tommy up to the public
gaze, Pym who first noticed his remarkable indifference to female
society, Pym who gave him----But alack! does no one remember Pym for
himself? Is the king of the _Penny Number_ already no more than a
button that once upon a time kept Tommy's person together? And we are
at the night when they first met! Let us hasten into Marylebone before
little Tommy arrives and Pym is swallowed like an oyster.

This is the house, 22 Little Owlet Street, Marylebone, but which were
his rooms it is less easy to determine, for he was a lodger who
flitted placidly from floor to floor according to the state of his
finances, carrying his apparel and other belongings in one great
armful, and spilling by the way. On this particular evening he was on
the second floor front, which had a fireplace in the corner, furniture
all his landlady's and mostly horsehair, little to suggest his calling
save a noble saucerful of ink, and nothing to draw attention from Pym,
who lolled, gross and massive, on a sofa, one leg over the back of it,
the other drooping, his arms extended, and his pipe, which he could
find nowhere, thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, an
agreeable pipe-rack. He wore a yellow dressing-gown, or could scarcely
be said to wear it, for such of it as was not round his neck he had
converted into a cushion for his head, which is perhaps the part of
him we should have turned to first It was a big round head, the
plentiful gray hair in tangles, possibly because in Pym's last
flitting the comb had dropped over the banisters; the features were
ugly and beyond life-size, yet the forehead had altered little except
in colour since the day when he was near being made a fellow of his
college; there was sensitiveness left in the thick nose, humour in the
eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at
last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had
resisted the body for