STORY THE FIRST--Peter Hope
plans his Prospectus
"Come in!" said Peter Hope.
Peter Hope was tall and thin, clean-shaven but for a pair of side
whiskers close-cropped and terminating just below the ear, with hair of
the kind referred to by sympathetic barbers as "getting a little thin on the
top, sir," but arranged with economy, that everywhere is poverty\'s true
helpmate. About Mr. Peter Hope\'s linen, which was white though
somewhat frayed, there was a self- assertiveness that invariably arrested
the attention of even the most casual observer. Decidedly there was too
much of it--its ostentation aided and abetted by the retiring nature of the
cut- away coat, whose chief aim clearly was to slip off and disappear
behind its owner\'s back. "I\'m a poor old thing," it seemed to say. "I
don\'t shine--or, rather, I shine too much among these up-to-date young
modes. I only hamper you. You would be much more comfortable
without me." To persuade it to accompany him, its proprietor had to
employ force, keeping fastened the lowest of its three buttons. At
every step, it struggled for its liberty. Another characteristic of Peter\'s,
linking him to the past, was his black silk cravat, secured by a couple of
gold pins chained together. Watching him as he now sat writing, his
long legs encased in tightly strapped grey trousering, crossed beneath the
table, the lamplight falling on his fresh-complexioned face, upon the
shapely hand that steadied the half-written sheet, a stranger might have
rubbed his eyes, wondering by what hallucination he thus found himself
in presence seemingly of some young beau belonging to the early \'forties;
but looking closer, would have seen the many wrinkles.