But he was known
never to use his extraordinary strength to the injury or humiliation of
others; rather to do them a kindly turn, or to enforce justice and fair
dealing between them. All this made him a favorite in backwoods society,
although in some things he appeared a little odd, to his friends. Far
more than any of them, he was given not only to reading, but to fits of
abstraction, to quiet musing with himself, and also to strange spells of
melancholy, from which he often would pass in a moment to rollicking
outbursts of droll humor. But on the whole he was one of the people
among whom he lived; in appearance perhaps even a little more uncouth
than most of them,--a very tall, rawboned youth, with large features,
dark, shrivelled skin, and rebellious hair; his arms and legs long, out
of proportion; clad in deerskin trousers, which from frequent exposure to
the rain had shrunk so as to sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several
inches of bluish shin exposed between their lower end and the heavy
tan-colored shoes; the nether garment held usually by only one suspender,
that was strung over a coarse homemade shirt; the head covered in winter
with a coonskin cap, in summer with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape,
without a band.
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