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 his half-sister Philomela--who had
no hypocritical concealment about her, thank heaven! and always told
people what she thought of them--pronounced the first of those luxuries
"trash," the second "disgusting," and the other two "idiotic," he met
her candid criticisms with a pleasant laugh, and said that, at any rate,
they hurt nobody but himself.

To which Philomela invariably retorted: "But suppose every strapping
fellow, at your time of life, should take to novel-reading, and such
fooleries, what would become of the world, I would like to know?"

And her brother, puffing out a long stream of smoke, would respond: