MADE WITHOUT HANDS.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume VI, Issue 73, 21 October 1897, Page 2

MADE WITHOUT HANDS.

" The Bibliothcca Staffordiensis," merits a place among the curiosities of literature from the circumstance tliat it was written without hands. The author, Mr. It. Simms, is a bookseller, and for many years has been collecting the materials for a complete catalogue of Staffordshire books and authors, which has now been issued in a large and handsome volume. When Mr. Simms was nearly nine years old, while he was taking his brother's tea to the brickyard where he worked, he was diiivrn into the cogwheels attached to a machine which made perforati d bricks, and lost his left arm and right hand. The lad aftei wards wore on the stump of his right arm a purse-like leather cap, the first cap being actually an old leather puree. In the course of time the right-hand corner of the bottom of the purse wore into a hole, and having inserted a slate-pencil, he found that he was able to write, and, with (he encouragement of a sympathetic school-master, became able to write so well, thiit no ODe who was not aware of the fact would guess that the writing was done without a hand.