he youthfulness of
his appearance.

At the time of his introduction here, his legs were as quiet as in their
nature they could be, having been elevated, for the greater comfort of
the owner, to the top of a pianoforte, and presenting an inclination of
forty-five degrees to Mr. Wilkeson's body, reposing calmly and smoking
an antique pipe in his favorite chair below. One of his long arms was
hanging listlessly by his side, and the other made a sharp projecting
elbow, and terminated in the interior of his vest. This was the attitude
which, of all possible adjustments of the human anatomy, Mr. Wilkeson
preferred; and he always assumed it and his pipe the moment he had put
on his dressing gown and Turkey slippers. He was well aware that popular
treatises on the "Art of Behavior" and the "Code of Politeness" were
extremely hard upon this disposition of the legs. His half-sister,
Philomela Wilkeson, who was high authority, had often visited his legs
with the severest censure, when, upon suddenly entering the room where
he was seated, she found the offending members confronting her from the
top of the piano, or the table, or a chair, or sometimes from the
mantelpiece. While Marcus Wilkeson admitted the full force of her
strictures as applied to legs in general, he claimed an exception for
his legs, which were always in his own or other people's way when they
rested on the floor, or were crossed after the many fashions popular
with the short-legged part of mankind.

Marcus Wilkeson's heretical opinion concerning legs was part of a system
of independent views which he entertained of life generally. He had
given up a profitable broker's shop in Wall street, a year before,
because he had made a fortune ten times larger than he would ever spend.
Having fulfilled the object for which he started in business, and for
which he had toiled like a slave ten years, he conceived that nothing
could be more sensible than to retire from it, make room for other
deserving men, and enjoy his ample earnings in the ways which pleased
him most, before an old age of money getting had deadened his five
senses, his intellect, and his heart.

Persons who knew Marcus Wilkeson well were aware that he was a shy,
self-distrustful fellow, amiable, generous, and that the only faults
which could possibly be alleged against him were an excessive fondness
for old books, old cigars, and profitless meditations, and a catlike
affection for quiet corners. And when