“Can not you tell me what you see, slow one?” demanded the Excelsior,
impatiently taking me by the elbow and turning me about face, “look at
this specimen here--one with the down of youth still upon him.”
“How hollow-eyed he looks!” I whispered.
“Aye, and his belly pinched.”
“He looks up through the leafless branches as though he were dreaming
and yet awake;” I added.
“Aye,” quoth the Great Axilla, “and his dreams never have and never
shall come true.”
“What is he?” I asked.
“He is a misfit;” was the reply.
Then we strolled slowly on until we reached the centre where the
fountain was flowing drearily. As we came to a stop, the Excelsior
squeezed my arm gently to attract my attention to a man of middle age
who sat upon a bench immediately beside us. I turned to study him for a
passing moment. His trousers were frayed at the bottom and soiled. His
beard was muddy with a growth of several days. He was leaning on the
arm at the end of the bench, holding in his fingers a twig with which
he was drawing strange devices upon the gravel walk, while the shadows
and the light of the sun played around him. There could be no mistake
in his actions. He was trying to get time behind him, and above all to
occupy his mind. He was striving to distract his thoughts from himself,
a ceaseless endeavor. No, there could be no doubt about the meaning of
that wayward, woe-begone look.
“Tell me, what is he?” I asked in a low voice.
“He is one of the unfits;” rejoined my host, meditatively.