Even his eyes, Freeland gray, were a little buffed over by sedentary habit, and the number of things that he was conscious of.

For instance, that the people passing him were distressingly plain, both men and women; plain with the particular plainness of those quite unaware of it.

It struck him forcibly, while he went along, how very queer it was that with so many plain people in the country, the population managed to keep up even as well as it did.

To his wonderfully keen sense of defect, it seemed little short of marvellous.

A shambling, shoddy crew, this crowd of shoppers and labor demonstrators! A conglomeration of hopelessly mediocre visages! What was to be done about it?
Ah! what indeed!--since they were evidently not aware of their own dismal mediocrity.