The Man of the Crowd

The Man of the Crowd is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.

An unnamed narrator is sitting in a coffee shop in London. He is fascinated by the crowd outside the window and considers how isolated people think they are, despite "the very denseness of the company around." He takes time to categorize the different types of people he sees.

As evening falls, he focuses on "a decrepit old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age," whose face has a peculiar idiosyncrasy, and whose body "was short in stature, very thin, and apparently very feeble." Although he is wearing filthy, ragged clothes, they are of a "beautiful texture." As the man moves on, the narrator dashes out of the shop to follow him. He leads the narrator through bazaars and shops, buying nothing, and into a poorer part of the city, then back into "the heart of the mighty London." At which point the two meet.