There was one feature of his dress that was pathetic in its uniqueness.
He wore a superb swallow-tail dress-coat; a gorgeous coat, which was
doubtless christened at some happy wedding (his father’s, I suppose);
had walked side by side with dainty laces; been swept through stately
quadrilles, pressed upon velvet, and to-night came to me upon a
shirtless back, and asked “trust” for a half-dozen newspapers.
It had that seedy, threadbare look which makes broadcloth, after its
first season, the most melancholy dress that sombre ingenuity ever
invented. It was scrupulously brushed and buttoned close up to the chin,
whether to hide the lack of a shirt, I never in the course of six
months’ intimate acquaintance had the audacity to inquire. In the
sleeve, on which rosy wrists had, in days gone by, laid in loving
confidence, a shriveled arm hung loosely, and from its outlet three
decrepit fingers driveled. His hat was old, and fell around his ears.
His breeches, of a whitish material, which had the peculiarity of
leaving the office perfectly dirty one evening and coming back pure and
clean the next morning. What amount of midnight scrubbing this required
from my hero Dobbs, I will not attempt to tell. Neither will I guess how
he became possessed of that wonderful coat. Whether in the direst days
of the poverty which had caught him, his old mother, pitying her boy’s
rags, had fished it up from the bottom of a trunk where, with mayhaps an
orange-wreath or a bit of white veil, it had lain for years, the last
token of a happy bridal night, and, baptizing it with her tears, had
thrown it around his bare shoulders, I cannot tell. All I know is, that
taken in connection with the rest of his attire, it was startling in its
contrast; and that I honored the brave dignity with which he buttoned
this magnificent coat against his honest rags, and strode out to meet
the jeers of the world and work out a living.