For my part, I should have taken it as far less an insult to be styled
"fellow," "clown," or "bumpkin." To either of these appellations my
rustic garb (it was a linen blouse, with checked shirt and striped
pantaloons, a chip hat on my head, and a rough hickory stick in my
hand) very fairly entitled me. As the case stood, my temper darted at
once to the opposite pole; not friend, but enemy!
"What do you want with me?" said I, facing about.
"Come a little nearer, friend," said the stranger, beckoning.
"No," answered I. "If I can do anything for you without too much
trouble to myself, say so. But recollect, if you please, that you are
not speaking to an acquaintance, much less a friend!"
"Upon my word, I believe not!" retorted he, looking at me with some
curiosity; and, lifting his hat, he made me a salute which had enough
of sarcasm to be offensive, and just enough of doubtful courtesy to
render any resentment of it absurd. "But I ask your pardon! I
recognize a little mistake. If I may take the liberty to suppose it,
you, sir, are probably one of the aesthetic--or shall I rather say
ecstatic?--laborers, who have planted themselves hereabouts. This is
your forest of Arden; and you are either the banished Duke in person,
or one of the chief nobles in his train. The melancholy Jacques,
perhaps? Be it so. In that case, you can probably do me a favor."
I never, in my life, felt less inclined to confer a favor on any man.
"I am busy," said I.
So unexpectedly had the stranger made me sensible of his presence, that
he had almost the effect of an apparition; and certainly a less
appropriate one (taking into view the dim woodland solitude about us)
than if the salvage man of antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a
leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. He was still young,
seemingly a little under thirty, of a tall and well-developed figure,
and as handsome a man as ever I beheld. The style of his beauty,
however, though a masculine style, did not at all commend itself to my
taste. His countenance--I hardly know how to describe the
peculiarity--had an indecorum in it, a kind of rudeness, a hard,
coarse, forth-putting freedom of expression, which no degree of
external polish could have abated one single jot. Not that it was
vulgar. But he had no fineness of nature; there was in his eyes
(although they might have artifice enough of another sort) the naked
exposure of something that ought not to be left prominent. With these
vague allusions to what I have seen in other faces as well as his, I
leave the quality to be comprehended best--because with an intuitive
repugnance--by those who possess least of it.