Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first
glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left
you doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and
would have attracted your attention even in a crowd.
During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him
only out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his
hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an
eye he became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew
had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an
instant later, an almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of
light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of
his hat, had perpetrated an unintentional deception by leading one to
suppose a head profusely covered with curly locks. "Tom Folio," I said,
"put on your hat and come back!" But after that day he never seemed young
to me.
I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and
the book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity.
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