"Go to Holborn!" you said, and the longest-bearded of
early prophets never uttered aught more pregnant with Destiny. I
went to Holborn, to the humble establishment of the tuneful tonsor,
Sweedle-pipe. All things come, the poet says, to him who knows how
to wait--especially, I may add, to him who knows how to wait behind
thin partitions with a chink in them. Ensconced in such an ambush-
-in fact, in the back shop--I bided my time, intending to solicit
pecuniary accommodation from the barber, and studying human nature
as developed in his customers.
There are odd customers in Kingsgate Street, Holborn--foreign gents
and refugees. Such a cove my eagle eye detected in a man who
entered the shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows
of age, and who requested Poll to shave him clean. He was a
sailor-man to look at; but his profile, David, might have been
carved by a Grecian chisel out of an iceberg, and that steel grey
eye of his might have struck a chill, even through a chink, into
any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of Montague Tigg.
The task of rasping so hirsute a customer seemed to sit heavy on
the soul of Poll, and threatened to exhaust the resources of his
limited establishment. The barber went forth to command, as I
presume, a fresher strop, or more keenly tempered steel, and
glittering cans of water heated to a fiercer heat.
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