" Cooper is a tall, thin, muscular man about thirty years old. Cooper's face, described by the narrator who often takes tones of Mr. Warburton, as pale and sharp, and a "thin and sallow face with no color." Mr. Warburton dresses as if he were going to dine at "his club in Paul Mall." Allen Cooper dined in the native sarong and baju. These descriptions themselves set the two men apart in class and generation. Mr. Warburton is a stout fifty-four year old man These details leads us to believe that these two will not get along and there will be irreconcilable differences, and thus constant antagonism.
Cooper is described as an "envious, ill-bred fellow, bumptious, self assertive and vain." Cooper resented Warburton from the beginning because of his mannerisms and polite sarcasm's. "He was very sensitive and he had a particular dislike of the English." He was originally from Australia and came from common education. He disliked those who came from higher education and feared they would patronize him. "He was so much afraid of people putting on airs with him like that, in order as it were to get in first, he put on such airs as to make every one think him insufferably conceited." "He was hard, he had no patience with the native mind, and he was a bully." Cooper claimed to look upon himself as every man's equal, yet he looked at those of other races as inferior. Cooper detested Mr. Warburton's snobbery, but he can't see that he was just as much of a snob. He too judged others based on their background and race, and he mistreated the people he judged in this way.
Mr. Warburton is described as an "unadulterated common snob. He is not as great as he sees himself and puts on airs to be. He denies his family background because he craves a more prominent one. "He would much rather be snubbed by a person of quality than flattered by a commoner." He does not see himself as a snob, just someone who prefers his own kind.