I expect that that commercial traveller had not been brought up as a scout and did not look at people's boots: if he had he would probably have seen that neither the Duke's nor Lord A's were those of a gardener.
The boots are very generally the best test of all the details of clothing. I was with a lady the other day in the country, and a young lady was walking just in front of us. "I wonder who she is" said my friend. "Well," I said, "I should be inclined to say I wonder whose maid she is." The girl was very well dressed but when I saw her boots I guessed that the dress had belonged to someone else, had been given to her and refitted by herself—but that as regards boots she felt more comfortable in her own. She went up to the house at which we were staying—to the servants' entrance—and we found that she was the maid of one of the ladies staying there.
Dr. Gross relates the story of a learned old gentleman who was found dead in his bedroom with a wound in his forehead and another in his left temple.
Very often after a murder the murderer, with his hands bloody from the deed and running away, may catch hold of the door, or a jug of water to wash his hands.
In the present case a newspaper lying on the table had the marks of three blood-stained fingers on it.
The son of the murdered man was suspected and was arrested by the police.
But careful examination of the room and the prints of the finger-marks showed that the old gentleman had been taken ill in the night—had got out of bed to get some medicine, but getting near the table a new spasm seized him and he fell, striking his head violently against the corner of the table and made the wound on his temple which just fitted the corner. In trying to get up he had caught hold of the table and the newspaper on it and had made the bloody finger-marks on the newspaper in doing so. Then he had fallen again, cutting his head a second time on the foot of the bed.
The finger-marks were compared with the dead man's fingers, and were found to be exactly the same. Well, you don't find two men in 64,000,000,000,000 with the same pattern on the skin of their fingers. So it was evident there had been no murder, and the dead man's son was released as innocent.
FORTITUDE.
In Japan, whenever a child is born, the parents hang up outside the house either a doll or a fish, according as the child is a girl or boy. It is a sign to the neighbours: the doll means it is a girl, who will some day have children to nurse; the fish means it is a boy, who, as he grows into manhood, will, like a fish, have to make his way against a stream of difficulties and dangers. A man who cannot face hard work or trouble is not worth calling a man.