h the row before he tumbled
in on his own hall carpet. It was in counting the spruce trees, he said,
which had a perplexing way of doubling, that he invariably lost
the track.

In nearly every house on this block there was a piano. The piano was the
great equalizer of the block. And, though in the loftier houses the
pianos might have been larger and costlier, and unquestionably noisier,
it did not follow that they were better played or pleasanter to hear
than the humbler instruments which served to swell the tumultuous chorus
in hours of morning practice. With regard to these pianos, it may here
be observed, that a gentleman with a passion for statistics, who chanced
to be well acquainted through the block, made the remarkable discovery
that the players were usually unmarried ladies; and that, when they
acquired husbands (as they occasionally did on that block), they put
aside the piano as something quite incapable of contributing to their
new-found happiness.

CHAPTER II.

THREE BACHELOKS.

Near the centre of the north side of the block stood a house in which
three men, who have much to do in this story, were whiling away an hour
before dinner, at the edge of evening, in the month of December, 185-.
The house had strange stones let in over the windows and door, and was
broad and sturdy, and was entered by steps slightly worn, and was shaded
by a tall and old chestnut tree, and showed many signs of age. It was
because of these evidences of antiquity, although the house was in good
preservation and vastly comfortable, that it had been picked out and
rented by the three men, two weeks previously.

Yet the three men exhibited no marks of age, past or coming, upon them.
The oldest, Mr. Marcus Wilkeson, looked no more than thirty-two; but
frankly owned to thirty-six. Being six feet and two inches high, having
a slim figure, round face, smooth brow, gentle eyes, perfect teeth to
the utmost extent of his laugh, and a head of hair free from the
plague-spot of incipient baldness which haunts the young men of this
generation, his appearance, now that he was confessedly a man, was very
much like that of an overgrown boy. On the contrary, when he was really
a boy, his extraordinary height (six feet at sixteen years) had given
him the outward semblance of a premature man. Probably his long legs and
arms, which were exceedingly supple, and were always swinging about with
a certain juvenile awkwardness, contributed much to t