Sitting pretty

I'm done grading, baking, shopping, wrapping, stamping, and mailing, and now I'm ready to do some sitting. For the true connoisseur of sitting, nothing beats Sidney Lanier's instructions for comfortably sitting on the deck of the steamboat Marion on a trip up Florida's Ocklawaha river in 1875:


Know, therefore, tired friend that shall hereafter ride up the Ocklawaha on the Marion--whose name I would fain call Legion--that if you will place a chair just in the narrow passage-way which runs alongside the cabin, at the point where this passage-way descends by a step to the open space in front of the pilot-house, on the left-hand side facing to the bow, you will perceive a certain slope in the railing where it descends by an angle of some thirty degrees to accommodate itself to the step aforesaid; and this slope should be in such a position as that your left leg unconsciously stretches itself along the same by the pure insinuating solicitations of the fitness of things, and straightway dreams itself off into an Elysian tranquility. You should then tip your chair in a slightly diagonal position back to the side of the cabin, so that your head will rest thereagainst, your right arm will hang over the chair-back, and your left arm will repose on the railing. I give no specific instruction for your right leg, because I am disposed to be liberal in this matter and to leave some gracious scope for personal idiosyncrasies as well as a margin for allowance for the accidents of time and place; dispose your right leg, therefore, as your heart may suggest, or as all the precedent forces of time and the universe may have combined to require you. 

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