His hat somehow kept on his head, but his attitude reminded me of a saying of the Arabs who, to give an idea of the height of a great rock or other tall object, say that to look up at it causes your turban to fall off.

The Americans, when they were chewers of tobacco, had a different expression; they said that to look up at so tall a thing caused the tobacco juice to run down your throat.
His appearance when I approached him interested me too.

His skin was the color of old brown leather and he had a big arched nose, clear light blue very shrewd eyes, and a big fringe or hedge of ragged white beard under his chin; and he was dressed in a new suit of rough dark brown tweeds, evidently home-made.

When I spoke to him, saying something about the cathedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch.

It was, he said, the first English cathedral he had ever seen and he had never seen anything made by man to equal it in beauty.