"It's a good thing," he says, "when a man knows what he pretends to
know."
The more I circulated among my friends, the more I heard of Carlstrom.
It is odd that I should have gone all these years knowing Carlstrom, and
yet never consciously until last week setting him in his rightful place
among the men I know. It makes me wonder what other great souls about me
are thus concealing themselves in the guise of familiarity. (This
stooped gray neighbour of mine whom I have seen so often working in his
field that he has almost become a part of the landscape--who can tell
what heroisms may be locked away from my vision under his old brown
hat?)
On Wednesday night Carlstrom was at Dr. McAlway's house--with Charles
Baxter, my neighbour Horace, and several others. And I had still another
view of him.
I think there is always something that surprises one in finding a
familiar figure in a wholly new environment. I was so accustomed to the
Carlstrom of the gunshop that I could not at once reconcile myself to
the Carlstrom of Dr. McAlway's sitting room. And, indeed, there was a
striking change in his appearance. He came dressed in the quaint black
coat which he wears at funerals. His hair was brushed straight back from
his broad, smooth forehead and his mild blue eyes were bright behind an
especially shiny pair of steel-bowed spectacles.
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