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. Then I heard this exclamation-- "It's a damned outrage!" My curiosity got the better of me--I coughed. The paper dropped instantly. "My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was opposite me." If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me. My picture had vanished. He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught together by a loose black cravat--a handsome, rather dashing sort of a man for one so old. "I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" passing it over to me--"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal outrage, sir!" I had read the "Extra," with all its sickening details, and so handed it back to him. "I quite agree with you," I said; "but this man was a brute."