to fire the battery of thought,
perchance in a tempest overflood it, extinguish it. His fortieth year
was written on his complexion and presence: it was the fortieth of
a giant growth that will bend at the past eightieth as little as the
rock-pine, should there come no uprooting tempest. It said manhood, and
breathed of settled strength of muscle, nerve, and brain.

Of the people passing, many knew him not, but marked him; some knew him
by repute, one or two his person. To all of them he was a noticeable
figure; even those of sheeplike nature, having an inclination to start
upon the second impulse in the flanks of curious sheep when their
first had been arrested by the appearance of one not of their kind,
acknowledged the eminence of his bearing. There may have been a
passenger in the street who could tell the double tale of the stick he
swung in his hand, showing a gleam of metal, whereon were engraved
names of the lurid historic original owner, and of the donor and the
recipient. According to the political sentiments of the narrator would
his tale be coloured, and a simple walking-stick would be clothed in
Tarquin guilt for striking off heads of the upper ranks of Frenchmen
till the blood of them topped the handle, or else wear hues of wonder,
seem very memorable; fit at least for a museum. If the Christian
aristocrat might shrink from it in terror and loathing, the Paynim
Republican of deep dye would be ready to kiss it with veneration.
But, assuming them to have a certain bond of manliness, both agree in
pronouncing the deed a right valiant and worthy one, which caused this
instrument to be presented to Alvan by a famous doctor, who, hearing of
his repudiation of the duel, and of his gallant and triumphant defence
of himself against a troop of ruffians, enemies or scum of their city,
at night, by the aid of a common stout pedestrian stick, alone in a
dark alley of the public park, sent him, duly mounted and engraved, an
illustrious fellow to the weapon of defence, as a mode of commemorating
his just abhorrence of bloodshed and his peaceful bravery.

Observers of him would probably speculate on his features and the
carriage of his person as he went by them; with a result in their
minds that can be of no import to us, men's general speculations being
directed by their individual aims and their moods, their timidities,
prejudices, envies, rivalries; but none could contest that he was
a potential figure. If to know hi