Unnamed Taxi Driver(2)

The narrative provides the "old" Kinston man who drives Horace home from the train with a fairly intricate story. "In the old days" he was at the head of local society, "a planter, a landholder, son of one of the first settlers." But when the town "boomed" into sudden prosperity, he lost his property "through greed and gullibility" and for the last several decades has made a living as a taxi driver. With his "gray moustache with waxed ends" and his "suit of grey striped with red," however, he still gives off an air of gentility (297-98).