"BretHarte-UrbanSketches" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harte Bret)

venerable head and bunchy fingers belong to an individual with whom
I am familiar, and to whom, for certain reasons hereafter described,
I choose to apply the epithet written above this article.

His advent in the family was attended with peculiar circumstances.
He was received with some concern--the number of retainers having
been increased by one in honor of his arrival. He appeared to be
weary,--his pretence was that he had come from a long journey,--so
that for days, weeks, and even months, he did not leave his bed
except when he was carried. But it was remarkable that his
appetite was invariably regular and healthy, and that his meals,
which he required should be brought to him, were seldom rejected.
During this time he had little conversation with the family, his
knowledge of our vernacular being limited, but occasionally spoke
to himself in his own language,--a foreign tongue. The difficulties
attending this eccentricity were obviated by the young woman who had
from the first taken him under her protection,--being, like the
rest of her sex, peculiarly open to impositions,--and who at once
disorganized her own tongue to suit his. This was affected by the
contraction of the syllables of some words, the addition of
syllables to others, and an ingenious disregard for tenses and the
governing powers of the verb. The same singular law which impels
people in conversation with foreigners to imitate their broken
English governed the family in their communications with him. He
received these evidences of his power with an indifference not
wholly free from scorn. The expression of his eye would
occasionally denote that his higher nature revolted from them. I
have no doubt myself that his wants were frequently misinterpreted;
that the stretching forth of his hands toward the moon and stars
might have been the performance of some religious rite peculiar to
his own country, which was in ours misconstrued into a desire for
physical nourishment. His repetition of the word "goo-goo,"--which
was subject to a variety of opposite interpretations,--when taken in
conjunction with his size, in my mind seemed to indicate his
aboriginal or Aztec origin.

I incline to this belief, as it sustains the impression I have
already hinted at, that his extreme youth is a simulation and
deceit; that he is really older and has lived before at some remote
period, and that his conduct fully justifies his title as A
Venerable Impostor. A variety of circumstances corroborate this
impression: His tottering walk, which is a senile as well as a
juvenile condition; his venerable head, thatched with such
imperceptible hair that, at a distance, it looks like a mild
aureola, and his imperfect dental exhibition. But beside these
physical peculiarities may be observed certain moral symptoms,
which go to disprove his assumed youth. He is in the habit of
falling into reveries, caused, I have no doubt, by some circumstance
which suggests a comparison with his experience in his remoter
boyhood, or by some serious retrospection of the past years. He has