It May Be That This Eccentric Individual Is
Remembered By Some Of My Readers, But I Assure Them That He Was Quite
A St. James's Park Dandy Compared With My Hermit.
He wore a pair of
gigantic shoes, about a foot broad at the toes, made out of thick cow-
hide with the hair on; and on his head was a tall rimless cow-hide hat
shaped like an inverted flower-pot.
His bodily covering was, however,
the most extraordinary: the outer garment, if garment it can be
called, resembled a very large mattress in size and shape, with the
ticking made of innumerable pieces of raw hide sewn together. It was
about a foot in thickness and stuffed with sticks, stones, hard lumps
of clay, rams' horns, bleached bones, and other hard heavy objects; it
was fastened round him with straps of hide, and reached nearly to the
ground. The figure he made in this covering was most horribly uncouth
and grotesque, and his periodical visits used to throw us into a great
state of excitement. And as if this awful burden with which he had
saddled himself - enough to have crushed down any two ordinary men - was
not sufficient, he had weighted the heavy stick used to support his
steps with a great ball at the end, also with a large circular bell-
shaped object surrounding the middle. On arriving at the house, where
the dogs would become frantic with terror and rage at sight of him, he
would stand resting himself for eight or ten minutes; then in a
strange language, which might have been Hebrew or Sanscrit, for there
was no person learned enough in the country to understand it, he would
make a long speech or prayer in a clear ringing voice, intoning his
words in a monotonous sing-song.
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