newly-sprouting

Updated: May 21, 2025

The table presented specimens of all the familiar characters of boarding-house life. There was the lawyer, sharp, observant, talkative, ready for a joke or an argument. There was the solemn man of business, who ate from a sense of duty, and scowled at the lawyer's bad puns. Near him, with an absurdly youthful wig and opaque goggles, sat the Unknown; his name, occupation, resources, and tastes alike a profound mystery. Several dapper clerks, whose right ears drooped from having been used as pen-racks, wearing stunning cravats, outré brooches and shirt-studs, learned in the lore of "two-forty" driving, were ranged opposite. Then there was the jolly widow, who was the admiration of men of her own age, but who cruelly gave all her smiles to the boys with newly-sprouting chins. Near her sat the fastidious man, whose nostrils curled ominously when any stain appeared on his napkin, or when anything sullied the virgin purity of his own exclusive fork. His spectacles seemed to serve as microscopes, made for the sole purpose of detecting some fatal speck invisible to other eyes. There was the singer, with a neck like a swan's, bowing with the gracious air that is acquired in the acknowledgment of bouquets and bravas. The artist was her vis-

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859