put aside the black bow for a white one. The Puritan strong
boy tried to be more gay for the holidays. In his diary for
the year 1873, he has recorded, "For Christmas I received
a pair of slippers, a mustache cup and saucer and a gold
tooth-pick."

Possibly the most famous feature of Mr. Comstock's
appearance was his whiskers, so eagerly seized upon by cari-
caturists for half a century. In his early fighting days they
were ginger-colored, and it must have been during this
period that a Sun reporter referred to them as "gamboge
mutton chops." Later they were white as the plume of
Navarre and a distinct handicap to the roundsman of the
Lord, for Comstock liked to make arrests in person and
sometimes he lost his man because he was not one whom
the ferret-eyed could fail to detect as he approached. Once
he wore a handkerchief mask-like across his face in stalking
down a street pedlar, but it is not known that he ever as-
sumed any other disguises. Possibly the whiskers indicate
an unsuspected sensitivity about his personal appearance in
the heart of Anthony Comstock. They were an honorable
badge of his calling and served in part to conceal the long
vivid scar which marked the course of the dirk with which
Conroy cut him. Still, it is not to be denied that he did
wear red flannel underwear all the year round.

The forehead was high, and baldness came early. The
eyes, blue and truculent. And he was truculent and gave
ground to no man. Always a certain tension was on him.
When he felt anything intensely -- this would cover prac-
tically all of Mr. Comstock's emotions -- he had a trick of
drawing down his upper lip as he spoke, and this gave his
face an expression of deep and passionate earnestness. That
was a fitting aspect. To examine closely into the life of
Comstock is to be convinced of both his passion and his

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