File:Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries- Volume 8, page 194, June 17, 1857.jpg

Transcription:

him with "Well, Mr [Matthew] Brady, where's this great filibuster?" He smiled and — introduced me to [William] Walker, who stood at my elbow. A short, slimmish man, very plainly dressed and wearing a wide-awake hat. His face was very peculiar. The skull was unpleasantly visible through the features, the cheek bones high and Celtic, the forehead broadish, but not high. His complexion appeared so rough as at first to create an idea that he was scorbutic, his mouth wide and vulgar, with chapped lips. His eyes of a cold slaty gray, had a singularly cold-blooded expression, with, I think, a latent touch of inanity. No one could ever have mistaken him for a gentleman or a true notability. You might as readily have fancied men getting up a strong personal regard for a frozen cold cod-fish as for this man. In shape his head was very Jack Sheppardish which resemblance was further increased by the total absence of beard, whisker or moustache, and the shortness of the dark hair. (He had something of the look of Cornelius Mathews. I was impressed with his resemblance to somebody I knew while looking at him, and presently the thought of whom flashed upon me.) Walker is just the sort of man who might order fifty women to be ravished in cold blood, or men to be murdered, without any sort of idea occurring to him that it might be an atrocity. Altogether a scoundrel whose picture seemed incomplete without fetters depicted on his wrists. I gratified a quiet old gentleman exceedingly