They abounded in all the various walks of life: there were honored
burgomasters without noses, wealthy merchants, great scholars, artists,
teachers. Amongst the humbler classes nasal destitution was almost as
frequent as pecuniary--in the humblest of all the most common of all.
Writing in the thirteenth century, Salsius mentions the retainers and
servants of certain Suabian noblemen as having hardly a whole ear among
them--for until a comparatively recent period man's tenure of his ears
was even more precarious than that of his nose. In 1436, when a Bavarian
woman, Agnes Bemaurian, wife of Duke Albert the Pious, was dropped off
the bridge at Prague, she persisted in rising to the surface and trying
to escape; so the executioner gave himself the trouble to put a long
pole into her hair and hold her under. A contemporary account of the
matter hints that her disorderly behavior at so solemn a moment was due
to the pain caused by removal of her nose; but as her execution was by
order of her own father it seems more probable that "the extreme penalty
of the law" was not imposed. Without a doubt, though, possession of a
nose was an uncommon (and rather barren) distinction in those days among
"persons designated to assist the executioner," as the condemned were
civilly called. Nor, as already said, was it any too common among
persons not as yet consecrated to that service: "Few," says Salsius,
"have two noses, and many have none."

Man's firmer grasp upon his nose in this our day and generation is
not altogether due to invention of the handkerchief. The genesis and
development of his right to his own nose have been accompanied with a
corresponding advance in the possessory rights all along the line of
his belongings--his ears, his fingers and toes, his skin, his bones, his
wife and her young, his clothes and his labor--everything that is (and
that once was not) his. In Europe and America today these things can
not be taken away from even the humblest and poorest without somebody
wanting to "know the reason why." In every decade the nation that is
most powerful upon the seas incurs voluntarily a vast expense of blood
and treasure in suppressing a slave trade which in no way is injurious
to her interests, nor to the interests of any but the slaves.

So "Freedom broadens slowly down," and today even the lowliest incapable
of all Nature's aborted has a nose that he dares to call his own and
bite off at his own sweet will. Unfortun