It will serve us best to see Elim Meikeljohn first as he walked across Winthrop Common. It was very early in April and should have been cool, but it was warm—already there were some vermilion buds on the maples—and Elim's worn shad-belly coat was uncomfortably heavy. The coat was too big for him—his father had worn it for twenty years before he had given it to Elim for college—and it hung in somber greenish folds about his tall spare body. He carried an equally oppressive black stiff hat in a bony hand and exposed a gaunt serious countenance.
Other young men passing, vaulting lightly over the wooden rail that enclosed the common, wore flowing whiskers, crisply black or brown like a tobacco leaf; their luxuriant waistcoats were draped with a profusion of chains and seals; but Elim's face was austerely shaved, he wore neither brocade nor gold, and he kept seriously to the path.
He was, even more than usual, absorbed in a semi-gloom of thought. It was his birthday, he was twenty-six, and he had been married more than nine years. Already, with his inherited dark temperament, he was middle-aged in situation and feeling. He had been assistant to the professor of philosophy and letters for three of those married years; yes—he had been graduated when he was twenty-three. He arrived at an entrance to the common that faced the row of houses where he had his room, and saw that something unusual was in progress.
The front of his boarding house was literally covered
