His ear was strangely hollow.

There's a fascinating case of a missing man - a found man, more precisely - discovered on the beaches near Adelaide, Australia. (full details showing here) The long and skinny (hairy, pointy, meaty) of it is that the man could be a spy, could be a soldier-deserter, could be a vagabond, could be anyone or anything. Who likely enjoyed reading the Rubaiyat.

From this man, whose identity is nothing except for anonymity par excellence, a preliminary investigator wrote that he carried "an expression about his face as though he might have been an educated man."

I wonder if the same comment would be made if he had not been a well-kempt Caucasian found.