taking our invisible seats in the opposite chair, proceed
to a contemplation of his person.

Age--four, perhaps five, and twenty--certainly not more; height, five
feet nine inches, with well-developed breast and shoulders; limbs,
whose firm, ample muscle betrays itself through the straight lines of
his light summer costume, and hands and feet of agreeable shape;
complexion fair, with a skin of feminine fineness and transparency,
whereon the uncontrollable blood writes his emotions so palpably that
he who runs may read; eyes of a clear, honest blue, but so shy of
meeting a steady gaze that few know how beautiful they really are;
mouth full and sensitive, and of so rich and dewy a red that we can not
help wishing he were a woman that we might be pardoned for kissing it;
forehead broad, and rather low; hair--but here we hesitate, for his
enemies would certainly call it red. Indeed, in some lights it is red,
but its prevailing tint is brown, with a bronze lustre on the curls.
As he sits thus, unconscious of our observation, he is certainly
handsome, in spite of a haunting air of timidity which weakens the
expression of features not weak in themselves. On further observation,
we are inclined to believe that he has not achieved that easy poise of
self-possession which, in men of becoming modesty, is the result of
more or less social experience. He belongs, evidently, to that class
of awkward, honest, warm-hearted, and sensitive natures whom all men
like, and some women.

Mr. Bartlett's reflections, after his arrival, were--we have good
reason to know--after this fashion: "When will I cease to be a fool?
Why couldn't I stare back at all those people on the balcony as coolly
as the two fellows who sat beside me? Why couldn't I get down without
missing the step and grazing my shin on the wheel? Why should I walk
into the house with my head down, and a million of cold little needles
pricking my back, because men and women, and not sheep, were looking at
me? I have at least an average body, as men go--an average intellect,
too, I think; yet every day I see spindly, brainless squirts [Mr.
Bartlett would not have used this epithet in conversation, but it
certainly passed through his mind] put me to shame by their
self-possession. The women think me a fool because I have not the
courage to be natural and unembarrassed, and I carry the consciousness
of the fact about me whenever I meet them. Come, come: this will never
do.