asseverations it was a noticeable fact that Mr.
Clark's complexion invariably grew more sultry
than its wont, and that his eyes, forever moist, grew
dewier, and that his lips and tongue would seem
covertly entering upon some lush conspiracy, which
in its incipiency he would be forced to smother with
his hastily drawn handkerchief. Then the eccentric
Mr. Clark would laugh nervously, and pouncing
on some subject so vividly unlike the one just
preceding it as to daze the listener, he would ripple
ahead with a tide of eloquence that positively
overflowed and washed away all remembrance of the
opening topic.

In point of age Mr. Clark might have been thirty,
thirty-five, or even forty years, were one to venture
an opinion solely by outward appearance and under
certain circumstances and surroundings. As, for
example, when a dozen years ago the writer of this
sketch rode twenty miles in a freight-caboose with
Mr. Clark as the only other passenger, he seemed
in age at first not less than thirty-five; but on
opening a conversation with him, in which he joined
with wonderful vivacity, a nearer view, and a
prolonged and studious one as well, revealed the rather
curious fact that, at the very limit of all allowable
supposition, his age could not possibly have exceeded
twenty-five.

What it was in the man that struck me as