Round the Block | Page 3

the great equalizer of the block. And, though in the loftier houses the
pianos might have been larger and costlier, and unquestionably noisier,
it did not follow that they were better played or pleasanter to hear than
the humbler instruments which served to swell the tumultuous chorus
in hours of morning practice. With regard to these pianos, it may here
be observed, that a gentleman with a passion for statistics, who chanced
to be well acquainted through the block, made the remarkable
discovery that the players were usually unmarried ladies; and that,
when they acquired husbands (as they occasionally did on that block),
they put aside the piano as something quite incapable of contributing to
their new-found happiness.
CHAPTER II.
THREE BACHELOKS.
Near the centre of the north side of the block stood a house in which
three men, who have much to do in this story, were whiling away an
hour before dinner, at the edge of evening, in the month of December,
185-. The house had strange stones let in over the windows and door,
and was broad and sturdy, and was entered by steps slightly worn, and
was shaded by a tall and old chestnut tree, and showed many signs of
age. It was because of these evidences of antiquity, although the house
was in good preservation and vastly comfortable, that it had been
picked out and rented by the three men, two weeks previously.
Yet the three men exhibited no marks of age, past or coming, upon

them. The oldest, Mr. Marcus Wilkeson, looked no more than
thirty-two; but frankly owned to thirty-six. Being six feet and two
inches high, having a slim figure, round face, smooth brow, gentle eyes,
perfect teeth to the utmost extent of his laugh, and a head of hair free
from the plague-spot of incipient baldness which haunts the young men
of this generation, his appearance, now that he was confessedly a man,
was very much like that of an overgrown boy. On the contrary, when he
was really a boy, his extraordinary height (six feet at sixteen years) had
given him the outward semblance of a premature man. Probably his
long legs and arms, which were exceedingly supple, and were always
swinging about with a certain juvenile awkwardness, contributed much
to the 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.