The railway mania of that famous year had attacked even the wary Wragge; had withdrawn him from his customary pursuits; and had left him prostrate in the end, like many a better man.

He had lost his clerical appearance--he had faded with the autumn leaves.

His crape hat-band had put itself in brown mourning for its own bereavement of black.

His dingy white collar and cravat had died the death of old linen, and had gone to their long home at the paper-maker's, to live again one day in quires at a stationer's shop.
A gray shooting-jacket in the last stage of woolen atrophy replaced the black frockcoat of former times, and, like a faithful servant, kept the dark secret of its master's linen from the eyes of a prying world.

From top to toe every square inch of the captain's clothing was altered for the worse; but the man himself remained unchanged--superior to all forms of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust.