He had drifted casually in upon us after the war, accompanied somewhat
elegantly by one John Randolph Clement Tuckerman, an ex-slave. He came
with much talk of his regiment,--a fat-cheeked, florid man of forty-five
or so, with shifty blue eyes and an address moderately insinuating. Very
tall he was, and so erect that he seemed to lean a little backward. This
physical trait, combining with a fancy for referring to himself freely
as "an upright citizen of this reunited and glorious republic, sir!" had
speedily made him known as "Upright" Potts. He was of a slender build
and a bony frame, except in front. His long, single-breasted frock-coat
hung loosely enough about his shoulders, yet buttoned tightly over a
stomach that was so incongruous as to seem artificial. The sleeves of
the coat were glossy from much desk rubbing, and its front advertised a
rather inattentive behavior at table. The Colonel's dress was completed
by drab overgaiters and poorly draped trousers of the same once-delicate
hue. Upon his bald head, which was high and peaked, like Sir Walter
Scott's, he carried a silk hat in an inferior state of preservation.
When he began to drink it was his custom to repair at once to a barber
and submit to having his side-whiskers trimmed fastidiously. Sober, he
seemed to feel little pride of person, and his whiskers at such a time
merely called attention somewhat unprettily to his lack of a chin. His
other possessions were an ebony walking stick with a gold head and what
he referred to in moments of expansion as his "library." This consisted
of a copy of the Revised Statutes, a directory of Cincinnati, Ohio, for
the year 1867, and two volumes of Patent Office reports.

At the time of which I speak the Colonel had long been sober, and the
day that Solon Denney completed those mysterious negotiations with him
he was as far from conventional standards of the beautiful as I remember
to have seen him.