e. Some
girl!"

CHAPTER X

Mr. Oscar Mitchell, attorney and counselor at law, sauntered down River
Street, with the cheerful and optimistic poise of one who has lunched
well. A well-set-up man, a well-groomed man, as-it-is-done; plainly
worshipful; worthy the highest degree of that most irregular of
adjectives, respectable; comparative, smart; superlative, correct.

Mr. Mitchell was correct; habited after the true Polonian precept;
invisible, every buckle, snap, clasp, strap, wheel, axle, wedge, pulley,
lever, and every other mechanical device known to science, was in place
and of the best. As to adornment, all in good taste--scarfpin, an
unpretentious pearl in platinum; garnet links, severely plain and quiet;
an unobtrusive watch-chain; one ring, a small emerald; no earrings.

Mr. Mitchell's face was well shaped, not quite plump or pink, with the
unlined curves, the smooth clear skin, and the rosy glow that comes from
health and virtue, or from good living and massage. Despite fifty years,
or near it, the flax-smooth hair held no glint of gray; his eyes, blue
and big and wide, were sharp and bright, calm, confident, almost
candid--not quite the last, because of a roving trick of clandestine
observation; his mouth, where it might or should have curved--must
once have curved in boyhood--was set and guarded, even in skillful
smilings, by a long censorship of undesirable facts, material or
otherwise to any possible issue.

Mr. Mitchell's whole bearing was confident and assured; his step, for all
those fifty afore-said years, was light and elastic, even in sauntering;
he took the office stairs with the inimitable sprightly gallop of the
town-bred.

Man is a quadruped who has learned to use his front legs for other things
than walking. Some hold that he has learned to use his head. But there
are three things man cannot do, and four which he cannot compass: to see,
to think, to judge, and to act--to see the obvious; to think upon the
thing seen; to judge between our own resultant and conflicting thoughts,
with no furtive finger of desire to tip the balance; and to act upon that
judgment without flinching. We fear the final and irretrievable calamity:
we fear to make ourselves conspicuous, we conform to standard, we bear
ourselves meekly in that station whereunto it hath pleased Heaven to call
us; the herd instinct survives four-footedness. For, we note the strange
but not the familiar; our thinking is to right