ABSTRACT
I wish, with all my heart, I could adequately describe Luke; I have often requested him to sit for his picture, and, if he had done so, I think I should have had it engraved for the benefit of the English public. Luke, however, has, what he calls, "a mortal objection to his face being in print." Therefore, good reader, you can never have an accurate idea of the subject of my story. He was, when I first knew him, about two-and-twenty; in height, six feet four inches: slight, and muscular; and the too visible size of his bones renders him not unworthy of his gigantic nomenclature. His countenance is nondescript – appertaining to no particular nation, yet possessing, it may be said, the deformities of all: – an Austrian mouth, French complexion, Highland hair (of the deepest tint), small pepper-and-salt coloured eyes, that constantly regard each other with sympathetic affection, and a nose elevated and depressed in open defiance of the line of beauty, are the most striking objects in his strange physiognomy; – in common justice, I must add, that his face is remarkably long, pale, and much disfigured by a cut he received from a "hurley" 585 in his boyhood, which carried away his left eye-brow, and a small portion of his cheek; this mark, Luke, who is an acknowledged wag, terms "his beauty-spot."
