"Well," I said aloud, at last, "it is to be hoped that I shall be able
to do something with the inside of my head, for I shall certainly never
do anything by the help of the outside."
This remark will doubtless strike anybody who reads it as being slightly
obscure, but I was in reality alluding to my physical deficiencies.
Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some share of the
comeliness of youth, but to me even this was denied. Short, thick-set,
and deep-chested almost to deformity, with long sinewy arms, heavy
features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half overgrown with a mop of
thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on which the forest had once
more begun to encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a
century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day.
Like Cain, I was branded--branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal
ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature with iron and abnormal strength and
considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that the spruce
young men of my College, though they were proud enough of my feats of
endurance and physical prowess, did not even care to be seen walking
with me.
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