Character Sketches

Write hard and fast about what hurts.
--Ernest Hemingway
From doing a quick bit of painting last night, I found that I really enjoyed it, and am learning to define when my energy wants outlet from painting or writing, or whathaveyou. You'd think I'd have gotten the hang of it already, right?
Well, I've been doing a couple sketches lately, of the writing variety, and just thought I would include one little bit here. It's incomplete as yet, and taken out of a stammered, abandoned short story, and has less to do with a physical encapsulation than with the feeling of the character. Anyhow. *clears throat*
A little like glue, and a great deal like old books, yes, that was how his room was scented, with its cobwebby depths all too fascinating not to plunder. The room itself was cool, dry, absent of mildews or moulds--that would have disturbed the books, seen to their ruin. And there could be none of that at all.
I know it bothered him, to live in a country filled with omissions--from the 'u's' in words like 'colour' and 'flavour,' to the newsjournals he combed for an unbiased approach to world events.
Such a scholar, he! Such a difficult world to live in for a soul as old as his battered copy of Hamerling's 'Aspasia.' My heart would have broken inside of me if I had lived the life he had.
I will, in order to spare you difficulty in connecting such events as I have yet to describe, narrate how I came to meet Griswold Thatcher, in as minute detail as I can recall.
I was quite in a daze that day, that he came round to the library, the musty grey building which stood upon a hill, overlooking Elm Street, with a very disapproving cast to its mouldered yellow bricks, chastising the cars which scurried to and fro for their unconscionable haste.
I, of course, had nothing to do with the world of machines of metal and their infinite cogs, spewing forth gaseous fumes into the air, soiling it with bleak oils and things for which he had no use.
He was a tall man, even in his age, with shoulders that still boasted a redoubtable strength. It was not, however, common to observe him unfolded, as it were, from him armchair near for fireplace, with a book habitually opened against a wide, weathered palm. As I have said, Griswold Thatcher is a man of the past, presenting to the future the effigy of a bygone era, when we were neither entertained nor educated by fits and starts of coloured light projected across an electronic screen. His silver hair belied the vivacious quality in his eyes, his face, lined with character and stamped with dignity, made one forget, with its easily-earned smile, how harsh the angles and planes of it were.