And the instant I observed his _hat_ I said to myself, "This looks like it." For dilapidated, worn, wretched as that hat was, there was in it an attempt, though indescribably humble, to be something melo-dramatic, foreign, Bohemian, and poetic.

It was the mere blind, dull, dead germ of an effort--not even _life_--only the ciliary movement of an antecedent embryo--and yet it _had_ got beyond Anglo-Saxondom.

No costermonger, or common cad, or true Englishman, ever yet had that indefinable touch of the opera-supernumerary in the streets.

It _was_ a sombrero.
"That's the man for me," I said.

So I called him, and gave him the chisel, and after a while went down.