When I entered the sleeper the porter was making up the berths, the
passengers sitting about in each other's way until their beds
were ready.
I laid my bag on an empty seat, threw my overcoat over its back, and sat
down to face a newspaper within a foot of my nose. There was a man
behind it, but he was too intent on its columns to be aware of my
presence. I made an inspection of his arms and hands and right leg, the
only portions of his surface exposed to view.
I noticed that the hands were strong and well-shaped, their backs
speckled with brown spots--too well kept to have guided a plough and
too weather-tanned to have wielded a pen. The leg which was crossed, the
foot resting on the left knee, was full and sinewy, the muscles of the
thigh well developed, and the round of the calf firmly modelled. The
ankle was small and curved like an axe handle and looked as tough.
There are times when the mind lapses into vacancy. Nothing interests
it. I find it so while waiting to have my berth made up; sleep is too
near to waste gray matter.
A man's thighs, however, interest me in any mood and at any time. While
you may get a man's character from his face, you can, if you will, get
his past life from his thigh. It is the walking beam of his locomotion;
controls his paddles and is developed in proportion to its uses. It
indicates, therefore, the man's habits and his mode of life.
If he has sat all day with one leg lapped over the other, arm on chair,
head on hand, listening or studying--preachers, professors, and all the
other sedentaries sit like this--then the thigh shrinks, the muscles
droop, the bones of the ankle bulge, and the knee-joints push through.
If he delivers mail, or collects bills, or drives a pack-mule, or walks
a tow-path, the muscles of the thigh are hauled taut like cables, the
knee-muscles keep their place, the calves are full of knots--one big one
in a bunch just below the strap of his knickerbockers, should he
wear them.
If he carries big weights on his back--sacks of salt, as do the poor
stevedores in Venice; or coal in gunnies, as do the coolies in Cuba; or
wine in casks, or coffee in bags, then the calves swell abnormally, the
thighs solidify; the lines of beauty are lost; but the lines of
strength remain.
If, however, he has spent his life in the saddle, rounding up cattle,
chasing Indians, hunting bandits in Mexico, ankle and foot loose, his
knees clutched tightly, hugging that other part of him, the horse, then
the muscles of the thigh round out their intended lines--the most subtle
in the modulating curving of the body. The aboriginal bareback rider
must have been a beauty.
I at once became interested then in the man before me, or rather in his
thighs--the "Extra" hid the rest.
I began to picture him to myself--young, blond hair, blue eyes, drooping
mustache, slouch hat canted rakishly over one eye; not over twenty-five
years of age. I had thought forty, until a movement of the paper
uncovered for a moment his waist-line which curved in instead of out.
This settled it--not a day over twenty-five, of course!
The man's fingers tightened on the edges of the paper. He was still
reading, entirely unconscious that my knees were within two inches
of his own.