He could
trace out lines of beauty in a gridiron, and detect the subtle charm
that lurks in the bootjack.
As not unfrequently happens, in partnerships of business and of other
descriptions, Matthew Maltboy--the young man standing before the blazing
coal fire, and critically surveying his own person--was quite the
opposite of Fayette Overtop. Maltboy was fat and calm. Portraits were in
existence showing Maltboy as a young lad in a jacket and turn-down
collar, having a slim, graceful figure, a delicate face, and a sad but
interesting promise of early decay upon him. Other portraits, of the
same original, taken at later periods of the photographic art,
represented a gradual squaring out of the shoulders, a progressive
puffiness in the cheeks, lips, and hands, incipient folds in the chin,
and a prevalent swollen appearance over all of Matthew Maltboy that the
artist permitted the sun to copy.
Portraits of Maltboy for a series of years would have proved a valuable
contribution to human knowledge, as showing the steady and remarkable
changes through which a man who is doomed to be fat passes onward to his
destiny.
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