THE HUNDRED-LEGGED MAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3244, 17 May 1916, Page 78

THE HUNDRED-LEGGED MAN.

By James Cassidy. (All Rights Reserved.) His right leg had been amputated, and everyone missed it. The right leg of each fellow creature who saw him felt sympathetic, and bent ever so slightly. The crutch he used was a very fine affair, but a poor substitute for a flesh-and-blood limb, lie thought regretfully of his lost ieg as he stood en the kerbstone waiting for the car. It had been such an active limb. He had possessed it so long, and led it through so many activities. His thoughts ran on thus: " I remember when I kicked Jimmy, the school bully, with it. My word how they cheered. What a whack it got at cricket, too; it served me well in the football scrum; it wasn't half bad at the bike; it helped win in a good few running matches. It's been jolly tired on the long marches; it was nearly knocked under in Quinn's Post rush; it knew what to expect when the shrapnel shattered its bones. It's all over ... it is true . . . and in its stead there's this . . . blasted crutch. . . - . Me, a cripple, got to drag myself through the rest of my days with a left leg and a st : ck !" The car pulled up at the stopping-place, and the one-legged man made a start towards it. His face flushed painfully, as he saw so many watching his poor attempts to get to it. Surely he had never felt so awkward, the street had never seemed to wide, the city had never stared so hard at him. He could have sworn, yet he was not given to b,ad language, but excessive self-consciousness had troubled him ever since the amputation of his leg—it was pronounced now. He thought it an odd coincidence that a fox terrier passed him limping and holding up one of its hind legs. He could have kicked the brute; it seemed to him as a creature that mocked at his infirmity. A score of people were pushing up to the car steps, each and all intent on getting in at one and the same time. Small chance for me," he reflected; "it takes so long with this deuced stick to climb the step and get to a seat." The crowd at the car had looked over its shoulder and seen him. In a moment every man's and every woman's right leg stepped a little aside in acknowledgment of a leg that was absent, and the cripple found a score of helpers—some active, many passive, but all helping in thought to get him into the car. The outside seats were full, but as he mounted the step a man in the corner rose and gave up his place. "Thanks, awfully," said the one-legged passenger, but the man who had given Up his seat looked at the crutch, shook his head slightly, and straightened his own right leg. A child who was laughing and talking caught sight of the support, and in a moment hushed herself, and looked intently at the man who had to limp his -way through life. She carried a little paper bag of sweets; she pulled it open, and peered into it several times, and on each occasion looked wistfully at the man as she did so. After a few moments she whispered a word to her mother, and then sidling up to the stranger, said as she held towards him her treasures, "Yon can have two —five —big ones if you like." He smiled, but was too nervous to extract from the bag. Understanding this, she took one out for him, and, with a boldness quite new to her, she offered it to his lips. He took it, and thanked her. She watched him, shyly and intermittently, and, believing that he wouldn't resent it, she ventured to touch with ono finger his crutch, saying softly: " Poor, poor man. Betty help co." The conductor came along for tickets. " All right, mate," said a passenger sitting next the cripple, as he held out his own ticket to the official; "two." " Thanks," said the ex-soldier. "Bah!" exclaimed he who had paid for the tickets ; " it's nothing ; you should ride free for the rest of your natural if I had my way." ; The one-legged passenger made no reply. He would sooner have paid his own fare; it felt so like accepting charity. Then a queer idea possessed him'. It was of a high and long wall made up of human legs—all the legs that had been amputated since the war began. The whimsical thought persisted and extended, and he saw Germany enclosed inside this wall. It formed her frontiers. He recognised his own leg; it was in position, laid out horizontally, and immediately opposite stood the Kaiser! But the car had stopped again, and he must' dismount. He seized his crutch, put the "rest" beneath his arm, and immediately twenty pairs of hands and as many right legs were busy helping him! He was sure of it, and the knowledge caused him to tremble. He reached the kerb, and it seemed to him as though, all of a sudden, a hundred strong right legs were at his disposal to carry him anywhere at any pace; he felt like flinging the crutch from him. He walked quickly, and avoided looking at anyone, yet was sure everyone he passed or met noticed him. Would he never become accustomed to it? How many times had he himself seen just such cripples as ho was now, and wondered how they felt about it. He knew now 1 He wanted some stamps, so he stepped into the General Post Office. Quite a crush was at, the stamp counter; it was close on posting time, and all Avere eager to be served first —so eager that folk could scarcely keep their turns. Pie drew hesitatingly near, fearful that he might lose the "post. Instantly the crush slackened, and he found himself next to the counter, and asking for stamps. He saw that the right leg of the crush was limp, and had given way to the missing leg. His letters were among the first posted by that particular crowd. On quitting the' post office he made for the bookseller's; he was a great reader.

He had to pass many shops, and to find: his way through a stream of people. At many of the shop doors stood the shopkeepers, just as they had stood when he had walked on two legs. Very few of them had noticed him in those "days. Now, on the contrary, every man he passed spoke to him; most smiled, and some gripped his hand. It was not at his face that they looked, but at the leg that was not. Eventually he reached the bookseller's. It had been a favourite haunt when he carelessly owned two legs. Then ho had frequently "stood brousing on new books he had withdrawn from their places. Hardly had he entered the shop when a ch'air from an inner office was brought him by the bookseller himself, who assisted him to sit down, chatting meanwhile. He did more—he fetched book after book that he thought might interest the one-legged man, and placed them close to his hand. "Don't hurry," he said; "if you don't find anything you like there, I've plenty more" ; and he 'walked away, conscious of his own right leg. and wondering what kind of bookseller he would make if his limb were replaced by a crutch. During the cripple's stay in the shop several potential customers entered, and, noticing the unaccustomed chair and its occupant, bought books of quite another tone than those they would otherwise have purchased. One of the customers was a fierce-looking man of thirty, whose role in life was that of an " agitator," as some called him. He had been instrumental not long before in inducing 100 men employed in an engineering works to " down tools," and as he walked up the shop waa mentally preparing a speech that might induce a second strike in the same works. He was known to the cripple, who asked him "How goes everything?" The agitator jerked his head, knowingly. "They'll be coming out again," he said, "unless they get their demands." "Ah. Is that so? Twopence -an hour, isn't it, your're fighting about?" "Yes. One shilling and fourpence a clay. That's a good bit to a man." "What price a right leg?" asked the one-legged man. "That's a bad loss." "Yes. There are hundreds of chaps in the same plight. If you and your lot could swop with us for twenty-four hour 3 you'd have another matter to worry over, and would choose another time for your trade disputes. Think of yourself standing on a stick for the rest of your life. Wouldn't you do all you could" then to help other chaps keep "their legs on?" "That's all very well, but our opportunity—is—is '' "Britain's extrimity !" "Well, hardly that." "What else do you make it?" Here the bookseller joined them, and the conversation lapsed. As the agitator left the shop, he paused in the doorway and looked back at the cripple. "So long," he said, and then hurried away. He was no longer preparing his speech for the men's meeting. He was watching himself, minus his right leg, addressing a crowd, each member of which had likewise lost his, or hers. He could feel the crutch in position, under his right arm; he could hear its dull thud on the pavement. ... It was odd, he reflected, how some things impress one. .And then a strange change suddenly happened within the man; it was none the less real because invisible; he could not, himself, have explained it, but to his amazement he found a new impulse directing his thoughts, and it was as though he were "going back" on his own past actions; retracing his steps, and in big subconsciousness he knew that a hundred right legs stood between him and the projected address to the malcontents. He hurried along, but the march of the legs was always in advance. Such a strange rhythm—right, right, right—no left—no bodies—only legs, right legs, stamping along. 'On they went, he following. As the distance lengthened between himself and the legs they appeared as arches, and over each archway he read, scrawled big, "Twopence an hour." For' a quarter of an hour by clocktime, but a hundred years by true time, he walked rapidly on. Then, suddenly facing about, he walked back the way he had come, and arrived at the bookseller's shop just as the cripple was leaving it. "Say," he began, "I wish you'd come down and help me at our meeting night after to-morrow." "Me! Help you?" "Yes. I'm going to ask them to —well to give you a hundred right legs. . . . for that that's gone. I've thought about it. D'yer see?" "Yes, I see; I'll come. Do you think they'll give up the strike?" "If I can show,, them that darned leg of yours, as I see it now —it—well 'pon my oath I've never seen such a limb. Y"ou come and sav a word or two —how you lost it, and all that," "No. I'll just be on the platform. You can do the talking. Tell them how cheap they're selling their brothers by choosing such a time to strike work." "I'll tell them." Never had he spoken better. The hall was picked, and the audience listened with breathless interest as he told of his own "flash of light on a leg that wasn't there." Before the echo of the cheers had died awav. as he introduced the or.e-legged man, he said. "I want you to let him know that a hundred right logs are ready to help him, that each man here who was to 'down tools' will stick to them, or, better still. oftVr himself for enlistment along with me." It was thus that the cripple got hia soubriguet of "the hundred legged man." A prouder man never lost a limb than he who stood on the platform. "Thank yon, friends; I'm glad its gone,**g he said. "I never knew it was wojJM so much until von gave so high a ]4 for the bally old limb." fl