how little he was noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, the
black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts (descending into shadow
and mystery below the counter) of his craft. He was of a pallid
complexion, hair of a kind of dirty fairness, greyish eyes, and a
skimpy, immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate nose.
His features were all small, but none ill-shaped. A rosette of pins
decorated the lappel of his coat. His remarks, you would observe, were
entirely what people used to call cliche, formulae not organic to the
occasion, but stereotyped ages ago and learnt years since by heart.
"This, madam," he would say, "is selling very well." "We are doing a
very good article at four three a yard." "We could show you something
better, of course." "No trouble, madam, I assure you." Such were the
simple counters of his intercourse. So, I say, he would have presented
himself to your superficial observation. He would have danced about
behind the counter, have neatly refolded the goods he had shown you,
have put on one side those you selected, extracted a little book with
a carbon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you out a little
bill in that weak flourishing hand peculiar to drapers, and have bawled
"Sayn!" Then a puffy little shop-walker would have come into view,
looked at the bill for a second, very hard (showing you a parting
down the middle of his head meanwhile), have scribbled a still more
flourishing J. M. all over the document, have asked you if there
was nothing more, have stood by you--supposing that you were paying
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 som