The Silent Isle by A.C. Benson

I cannot help wondering what the substance was which my fellow-traveller to-day was consuming under the outward guise of cigarettes. It had a scent that was at once strange and afflicting. It was no more like tobacco than tobacco is like violets. It seemed as though it must have been carefully prepared and procured for some unknown purpose, but it was impossible to connect pleasure with it.

It had a corroding mineral scent, and must have been digged, I think, out of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was horrible to me. I pitied those who had to serve him, and the relations compelled to own him. Yet I cannot trace the origin of this deep repugnance. There are innumerable natural objects far more hideous and outwardly repellent, but which yet do not possess this nauseating quality. Such shuddering hostility may lie far deeper than the outward appearance, and arise from some innate enmity of soul.