One was an ill-favored, talkative little man, who wore spectacles and the shabbiest of clothing, and seemed to pride himself in a bushy red beard and hair.

In short, he was about as dilapidated a specimen of rejected humanity as Nature in one of her wildest freaks could have produced.

Indeed, I may as well inform the reader that this person was Warren Holbrook, who, since his departure from Nyack, had been enlightening the people of this neighborhood by preaching the gospel of the "great advanced ideas," and in that way picking up enough to keep the wolf from the door, though it would not put clothes on his back.
Holbrook declared that the world had not used him well generally; but he never thought of looking into himself for the cause.

He was willing, however, to relinquish the gospel of the advanced ideas for a business that would put money in his pocket and clothes on his back.

Here he was, then, engaged in the business of getting up the great Kidd Discovery Company, by which every man who invested in it was to make a fortune.
The other was a slender, well-formed young man, perhaps twenty-five or six years old, of dark olive complexion, and black, oily hair that curled all over his head.