Hair That Is Scenery

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Title:     Hair That Is Scenery
Author: Robert Cortes Holliday [More Titles by Holliday]

Mr. Wigger, Mrs. Wigger's husband (the writer boards with Mrs. Wigger), is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight upward to the crown of his head (from the three-quarters view of him studied here only one full ear is visible, and just barely the tip of the other one) an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black, undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. Wigger's mustache, a great, glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big, with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated. In this man romance lives on. A prosaic age has not marred him. You can readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. He is a man not tonsorially decadent.

[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: Hair That Is Scenery

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