ner so fascinating, the
living tabernacle of Mr Riprapton. The pulsator, with pointed toe and
gently turned calf, would make a progress in a direct line, but as the
sole touched the ground, the heel would slightly rise and then fall, and
whilst you were admiring the undulating grace of the pulsator,
unobserved and silently you would find the gyrator had stolen a march
upon you, and actually taken the _pas_ of its five-toed brother. One
leg marched and the other swam, in the prettiest semicircle imaginable.
When he stopped, the flourish of the gyrator was ineffable. The
drumstick in the hand of the big black drummer of the first regiment of
foot-guards was nothing to it. Whenever Riprapton bowed--and he was
always bowing--this flourish preluded and concluded the salutary bend.
It was making a leg indeed.

Many a time, both by ladies and gentlemen, he has been offered a cork
leg--but he knew better; had he accepted the treacherous gift he would
have appeared but as a lame man with two legs, now he was a perfect
Adonis with one. I do believe, in my conscience, that Cupid often made
use of this wooden appendage when he wished to befriend him, instead of
one of his own arrows, for he was really a marvellous favourite with the
ladies.

Well, no sooner had my friend with the peg made himself a fixture in the
school, than he took me down, not a peg or two, but a good half-dozen.
He ridiculed my poetry--he undervalued my drawing--he hit me through my
most approved guards at my fencing--he beat me hollow at hopping, though
it must be confessed that I had the advantage with two legs; but he was
again my master at "all-fours." He out-talked me immeasurably, he
out-bragged me most heroically, and out-lied me most inconceivably.
Knowing nothing either of Latin or Greek, they were beneath a
gentleman's notice, fit only for parsons and pedants; and he was too
patriotic to cast a thought away upon French. As he was engaged for the
arithmetical and mathematical departments, it would have been perhaps as
well if he had known a little of algebra and Euclid; but, as from the
first day he honoured me with a strict though patronising friendship, he
made me soon understand that we were to share this department of
knowledge in common. It was quite enough if one of the two knew
anything about the matter; besides, he thought that it improved me so
much to look over the problems and algebraical calculations of my
schoolfellows.

With t