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In the meantime, I, who thirsted more for that tale of terror which the old soldier had all but begun, of which in that strangely battered skull I had only an hour ago seen face to face so grizzly a memento, and of which in all human probability I never was to hear more, looked out dejectedly from the window, when, whom should I behold marching up the street, at slow time, towards the Salmon House, but the identical old soldier, cocked-hat, copper nose, great red single-breasted coat with its prodigious wide button-holes, leggings, cane, and all, just under the village tree.
The speaker was a middle-aged, middle-statured man, with a quick intelligent eye, dressed in a single-breasted green riding-coat, striped toilinette waistcoat, and drab trousers, with a whip in his hand. "Thank you for nothing!" replied Mr. Jorrocks, eyeing him in return, upon which the speaker turned to the clerk and asked if there were any letters for Monsieur Apperley or Nimrod.
And we walked through the town, and over the bridge, and we saw nothing of his cocked hat and red single-breasted frock, and returned rather disappointed to tea. I ran into the back room which commanded the church-yard in the hope of seeing the old fellow once more, with his cane shouldered, grinning among the tombstones in the evening sun.
And so, good, strong brogues or brogans, with broad bottoms and big, flat heels, succeeded the boots, and were found much more comfortable and agreeable, easier put on and off, and altogether the more sensible. A short-waisted and single-breasted jacket usurped the place of the long-tailed coat, and became universal.
From thence he emerged half an hour later attired in the costume of the day a jaunty brown velveteen jacket, loose red scarf, speckled white waistcoat single-breasted and of his own pattern and cut dove-gray trousers, and white gaiters. No town clothes for St. George as long as his measure was in London and his friends were good enough to bring him a trunk full every year or two.
They were all supposed to be gray, but there were many shades of gray, sometimes verging to a light blue, with butternut as the predominant color. They wore gray jackets, short of waist and single-breasted. Caps were giving way to soft felt hats, and boots had already been supplanted by broad, strong shoes, called brogans.
The dress so universally worn by the male sex, even from boyhood, in all parts of the Caucasus, consists of a single-breasted garment, like a frock-coat, but reaching almost to the ankles, tightened in closely at the waist, with a belt from which are suspended dagger, sword, and frequently a pistol, and having on either breast a row of ten or twelve sockets, each of a size to hold a cartridge.
He had various names for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The Single-breasted Virgin" these last, however, always in the musical Malay equivalent.
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