“Pardon me,” I proclaimed, after attempting, without success, to insinuate myself between two of these coarsely dressed individuals. “But I am engaged on a mission of the utmost importance, and must urge you to move aside. The intelligence I intend to convey may help avert a needless and potentially disastrous confrontation.”

Neither this appeal, however, nor my redoubled effort to squeeze through the narrow space separating this particular duo had any discernible effect. Indeed, the two men—who remained standing with their backs in my direction—appeared to be as oblivious of my presence as a pair of American bison to the operations of those parasitical members of the avian clan that subsist by pecking insects from the former’s thickly matted humps.

My patience having been stretched to the snapping point, I reached up a hand and sharply tapped the nearer of the two on the shoulder of his frayed and filthy overcoat, whose execrable condition was such that, at the touch of my fingertips, a small puff of dust arose from the fabric. This gesture finally drew the attention of the wretchedly clad fellow. Slowly swivelling in my direction, he peered down at me with a face that—both in its individual features and overall cast—seemed expressly designed as the living illustration of the colorfully descriptive vulgarism, “plug ugly.”

From the deplorable condition of his sullied complexion, stubbled jaw, and stringy, dun-colored hair, it was sadly evident that an inordinate period had elapsed since he had last availed himself of soap, scissors, razor, or comb. His eyebrows were of a more than wonted shagginess, growing together at the bridge of his nose, so as to form a thick excrescence of hair that bore an unsettling resemblance to a member of that singularly repellent variety of arthropod commonly known as the centipede.

From the shadowy recesses of his ocular indentations, two red-tinged orbs regarded me with an expression in which malice, ignorance, and low cunning commingled in equal measure. His misshapen nose—the evident by-product of numerous violent altercations—was further disfigured by its mottled, bulbous tip, whose webwork of ruptured capillaries gave eloquent, if unsightly, testimony of his propensity for alcoholic over-indulgence.

Like countless numbers of his countrymen, he was—as the foully bespattered condition of his shirt-front made only too evident—addicted to the odious practice of “chewing and spitting.” Even now, his lips moved in a leisurely, ruminative manner, reminiscent of die mastications of a bovine. The cheek that retained his quid of tobacco was so severely distended that he might have been suffering from a case of infectious mumps.

As I studied the features of this altogether unsavory individual, an expression of coarse amusement slowly overspread his countenance. Forming his lips into an exaggerated pucker, he drew back his head and—snapping it forward with a suddenness that caught me completely unawares—expectorated a glob of vile, brown-colored liquid, which landed with an audible splat only inches from the toes of my shoes.