Day after day had Mr. Hookey noticed the accomplished, the
highly-gifted Merton; but it was only upon this particular morning
that the recognition was mutual. Merton, on turning his eyes by chance
from the ground, looked to the opposite side of the street, and there
beheld _a nose_. He then turned his eyes to the earth in his usual
meditative mood; but, reflecting that a nose without an owner was
rather a singular phenomenon, he looked a second time, and there,
behind the nose, he saw a man; it was Mr. Hookey himself.

This was the first time that the melancholy and intellectual student
reciprocated upon Hookey the attention which Hookey had hitherto
bestowed exclusively upon him. No more was the barber's "sweetness
wasted upon the desert air," but fell on one who knew how to
appreciate it to its fullest extent. Merton stood stock-still, and
gazed upon him with mute admiration. He was positively fascinated. The
nose operated upon him like the head of Medusa, and almost turned him
to stone. And Mr. Hookey was fascinated too. Merton also had become
Medusafied, and exercised a petrifactive influence upon the barber. He
was nailed fast to the threshold of his own door, and gazed upon his
fancied personification of Lara and Manfred with an indomitable and
resistless perseverance, which utterly confounded himself; while
Merton, nailed alike fast to the opposite footpath, stood staring at
his antagonist, or rather at his nasal protuberance. This impressive
scene continued for several minutes, when Merton, regaining the power
of locomotion, slowly approached the barber, his arms all the while
crossed, and his eyes intently fixed upon the nose. Nine slow and
awful steps brought him face to face with Hookey. The barber's eyes
were fixed intently upon _his--his_ eyes upon the barber's nose. The
scene was extremely dreadful; and Mr. Hookey, after vainly trying to