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.
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