and I) ceased ogling each other simultaneously. The whole of us suspended
our conversation in a moment--looked to the door of the room--breathed
hard, and wondered what it could be. The reader will perhaps marvel how
such an impression could be produced by so very trivial a circumstance;
but if he himself had heard the sound, he would cease to wonder at the
strangeness of our feelings. The knocks were the most extraordinary ever
heard. They were not those petty, sharp, brisk, soda-water knocks given by
little, bustling, common-place men. On the contrary, they were slow,
sonorous, and determinate. What was still more remarkable, they were
_three_ in number, neither more nor less.

Scarcely had our surprise time to subside, than we heard the outer door
opened by the servant--then it closed--then heavy footsteps, one, two, and
three, were audible in the lobby--then the dining-room door was opened;
and a form which filled the whole of its ample aperture, from top to
bottom, from right to left, made its appearance. It was the figure of a
man, but language would sink under his immensity. Never in heaven, or
earth, or air, or ocean, was such a man seen. He was hugeness itself--bulk
personified--the _beau ideal_ of amplitude. When the dining-room door was
first opened, the glare of the well-lighted lobby gleamed in upon us,
illuminating our whole apartment with increase of lustre; but no sooner
did he set his foot upon the threshold, than the lobby light behind him
was shut out. He filled the whole gorge of the door like an enormous
shade.

Onward, clothed in black, came the moving mountain, and a very pleasing
monster he was. A neck like that of a rhinoceros sat piled between his
"Atlantean shoulders," and bore upon its tower-like and sturdy stem, a
countenance prepossessing from its good-humour, and amazing for its
plumpness and rubicundity. His cheeks were swollen out into billows of