meanwhile, that there was such a thing as a soured mind or a crabbed countenance to be met with in the whole wide world.

HAROLD SKIMPOLE 1

Charles Dickens

He was a little bright creature, with a rather large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous, and was said with such a captivating gayety, that it was fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr. Jarndyce, and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance, in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portraits), which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the usual road of years, cares, and experiences.

MR. GEORGE 2
Charles Dickens

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty; well-made and goodlooking; with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is, that he sits forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside. His step too is measured and heavy, and would go well with a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth

From Bleak House.

From Bleak House.

is set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his broad brown hand upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether one might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.

AUNT CLARA 1
Arnold Bennett

AUNT CLARA was a handsome woman. She had been called -but not by men whose manners and code she would have approved "a damned fine woman." Her age was about forty-two, which at that period, in a woman's habit of mind, was the equivalent of about fifty to-day. Her latest photograph was considered to be very successful. It showed her standing behind a velvet chair and leaning her large but still shapely bust slightly over the chair. Her forearms, ruffled and braceleted, lay along the fringed back of the chair, and from one negligent hand depended a rose. A heavy curtain came downwards out of nothing into the picture, and the end of it lay coiled and draped on the seat of the chair. The great dress was of slate-colored silk, with sleeves tight to the elbow and thence, from a ribbon bow, broadening to a wide, triangular climax that revealed quantities of lace at the wrists. The pointed cords of the sleeves were picked out with squares of velvet. A short and highly ornamental fringed and looped flounce waved grandly out behind from the waist to the level of the knees; and the stomacher recalled the ornamentation of the flounce; and both the stomacher and the flounce gave contrasting value to the severe plainness of the skirt, designed to emphasize the quality of the silk. Round the neck was a lace collarette to match the furniture of the wrists, and the broad ends of the collarette were crossed on the bosom and held by a large jet brooch. Above that you saw a fine regular face, with a firm hard mouth and a very straight nose and dark eyebrows; small ears weighted with heavy jet ear-rings.

From Clayhanger. E. P. Dutton and Company. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The photograph could not render the clear perfection of Aunt Clara's rosy skin; she had the color and the flashing eye of a girl. But it did justice to her really magnificent black hair. This hair was all her own, and the coiffure seemed as ample as a judge's wig. From the low forehead the hair was parted exactly in the middle for about two inches; then plaited bands crossed and re-crossed the scalp in profusion, forming behind a pattern exceedingly complicated, and down either side of the head, now behind the ear, now hiding it, now resting on the shoulder, now hanging clear of them, fell long multitudinous glossy curls. These curls-one of them in the photograph reached as far the stomacher-could not have been surpassed in Bursley.

She was a woman of terrific vitality. Her dead sister had been nothing in comparison with her. She had a glorious digestion, and was the envy of her brother-in-law-who suffered much from biliousness-because she could eat with perfect impunity hot buttered toast and raw celery in large quantities. Further, she had independent means, and no children to cause anxieties. Yet she was always, as the phrase went, "bearing up," or, as another phrase went, "leaning hard." Frances Ridley Havergal was her favorite author, and Frances Ridley Havergal's little book, Lean Hard, was kept on her dressing-table. (The girls, however, averred that she never opened it.) Aunt Clara's spiritual life must be imagined as a continual, almost physical leaning on Christ. Nevertheless she never complained, and she was seldom depressed. Her desire, and her achievement, was to be bright, to take everything cheerfully, to look obstinately on the best side of things; and to instil this religion into others.

BUD TILDEN, MAIL-THIEF 1

F. Hopkinson Smith

"THAT'S Bud Tilden, the worst of the bunch," said the jail warden-the warden with the sliced ear and the gorilla hands.

From The Under Dog. Charles Scribner's Sons. Reprinted by per"Reminds me of a cat'mount I tried to tame once, only he's twice as ugly."

As he spoke, he pointed to a prisoner in a slouch hat clinging halfway up the steel bars of his cage, his head thrust through as far as his cheeks would permit, his legs spread apart like the letter A.

"What's he here for?" I asked.

"Robbin' the United States mail."

"Where?'”

"Up in the Kentucky mountains, back o' Bug Holler. Laid for the carrier one night, held him up with a gun, pulled him off his horse, slashed the bottom out o' the mail bag with his knife, took what letters he wanted, andlit off in the woods, cool as a chunk o'ice. Oh! I tell ye, he's no sardine; you kin see that without my tellin' ye. They'll railroad him, sure." "When was he arrested?'"

"Last month-come down in the November batch. The dep 'ties had a circus 'fore they got the irons on him. Caught him in a clearin' 'bout two miles back o' the Holler. He was up in a corn-crib with a Winchester when they opened on him. Nobody was hurted, but they would a-been if they'd showed the top o' their heads, for he's strong as a bull and kin scalp a squirrel at fifty yards. They never would a-got him if they hadn't waited till dark and smoked him out, so one on 'em told me." He spoke as if the prisoner had been a rattlesnake or a sheep-stealing wolf.

The mail-thief evidently overheard, for he dropped, with a catlike movement, to the steel floor and stood looking at us through the bars from under his knit eyebrows, his eyes watching our every movement.

There was no question about his strength. As he stood in the glare of the overhead light I could trace the muscles through his rough homespun for he was a mountaineer, pure and simple, and not a city-bred thief in ready-made clothes. I saw that the bulging muscles of his calves had driven the wrinkles of his butternut trousers close up under the kneejoint, and that those of his thighs had rounded out the coarse cloth from the knee to the hip. The spread of his shoulders had performed a like service for his shirt, which was stretched out of shape over the chest and back. This was crossed by but one suspender, and was open at the throat-a tree-trunk of a throat, with all the cords supporting the head firmly planted in the shoulders. The arms were long and had the curved movement of the tentacles of a devil-fish. The hands were big and bony, the fingers knotted together with knuckles of iron. He wore no collar nor any coat; nor did he bring one with him, so the Warden said.

I had begun my inventory at his feet as he stood gazing sullenly at us, his great red hands tightly clasped around the bars. When in my inspection I passed from his open collar up his tree-trunk of a throat to his chin, and then to his face, half-shaded by a big slouch hat, which rested on his flaring ears, and at last looked into his eyes, a slight shock of surprise went through me. I had been examining this wild beast with my judgment already warped by the Warden; that's why I began at his feet and worked up. If I had started in on an unknown subject, prepared to rely entirely upon my own judgment, I would have begun at his eyes and worked down. My shock of surprise was the result of this upward process of inspection. An awakening of this kind, the awakening to an injustice done a man we have half understood, often comes after years of such prejudice and misunderstanding. With me this awakening came with my first glimpse of his eyes.

There was nothing of the Warden's estimate in these eyes; nothing of cruelty nor deceit nor greed. Those I looked into were a light blue-a washed-out china blue; eyes that shone out of a good heart rather than out of a bad brain; not very deep eyes; not very expressive eyes; dull, perhaps, but kindly. The features were none the less attractive; the mouth was large, well-shaped, and filled with big white teeth, not one missing; the nose straight, with wide, well-turned nostrils; the brow low, but not cunning nor revengeful; the chin strong and well-modelled, the cheeks full and of good color. A boy of twenty I should have said perhaps twenty-five; abnormally strong, a big animal with small brain power, perfect digestion, and with every function of his body working like a clock. Photograph his head and come upon it suddenly in a collection of others, and you would have said: