Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/392



N old man came out of his door and sat down on the ragged porch. It would be more exact to say that he sank down, for he dropped upon his broken chair heavily, as if from real physical weakness, or that agitation of mind and heart which creates it.

At first impression he seemed to be a very old man; but on the second, one would have judged him to be still something under seventy, and would have concluded that age had chased him down before his time because trouble had disarranged the schedule. He was a poor person, beyond a doubt; his threadbare clothes were those of a man for whom no woman cares. Several of the buttons were missing from his black coat and vest, and of those which remained two were sewed on with blue thread and one with white. His collar was raw at the edge, and his lean, cuffless wrists shook as he shut his hands together upon the piazza rail and dropped his face upon them.

He was not altogether bald, but had a considerable tonsure of clear white hair, which was neatly brushed. Of the untidiness of age and solitude Jonathan Perch had so little that this circumstance alone distinguished him. He was scrupulously clean, and his wasted hands were those of a man who might have passed for something of a gentleman in his youth and vigor. These, now clasped, or, it