and it was in this respect that our friend's countenance was supremely
eloquent. The discriminating observer we have been supposing might,
however, perfectly have measured its expressiveness, and yet have been
at a loss to describe it. It had that typical vagueness which is not
vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being
committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of
general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at
one's own disposal so characteristic of many American faces. It was our
friend's eye that chiefly told his story; an eye in which innocence
and experience were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory
suggestions, and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of
romance, you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid
and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive
yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely
good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in its concessions,
and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve. The cut of this
gentleman's mustache, with the two premature wrinkles in the cheek above
it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed shirt-front
and a cerulean cravat played perhaps an obtrusive part, completed the
conditions of his identity. We have approached him, perhaps, at a not
especially favorable moment; he is by no means sitting for his portrait.
But listless as he lounges there, rather baffled on the aesthetic
question, and guilty of the damning fault (as we have lately discovered
it to be) of confounding the merit of the artist with that of his work
(for he admires the squinting Madonna of the young lady with the boyish
coiffure, because he thinks the young lady herself uncommonly taking),
he is a sufficiently promising acquaintance. Decision, salubrity,
jocosity, prosperity, seem to hover within his call; he is evidently a
practical man, but the idea in his case, has undefined and mysterious
boundaries, which invite the imagination to bestir itself on his behalf.

As the little copyist proceeded with her work, she sent every now and
then a responsive glance toward her admirer. The cultivation of the fine
arts appeared to necessitate, to her mind, a great deal of byplay, a
great standing off with folded arms and head drooping from side to side,
stroking of a dimpled chin with a dimpled hand, sighing and frowning
and patting of