cash--until the central figure of this story reappeared with the change.

One glance more at him, and the puffy little shop-walker would have been

bowing you out, with fountains of civilities at work all about you. And

so the interview would have terminated.

But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not concern

itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation.

Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the

earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen--even at the

cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about

this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the

thing that must be told if the book is to be written, was--let us face

it bravely--the Remarkable Condition of this Young Man's Legs.

Let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness. Let us

assume something of the scientific spirit, the hard, almost professorial

tone of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this young man's legs as

a mere diagram, and indicate the points of interest with the unemotional

precision of a lecturer's pointer. And so to our revelation. On the

internal aspect of the right ankle of this young man you would have

observed, ladies and gentlemen, a contusion and an abrasion; on the

internal aspect of the left ankle a contusion also; on its external

aspect a large yellowish bruise. On his left shin there were two

bruises, one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple,

and another, obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy red--tumid and

threatening. Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner, an unnatural

The Wheels of Chance