Character of gentlemen.
I was speaking with a detective not long ago about a gentleman we had both been talking to, and we were trying to make out his character. I remarked—"well, at any rate, he was a fisherman," but my companion could not see why: but then he was not a fisherman himself. I had noticed a lot of little tufts of cloth sticking upon the left cuff of his coat.
A good many fishermen, when they take their flies off the line, stick them into their cap to dry: others stick them into their sleeve. When dry they pull them out, which often tears a thread or two of the cloth.
It is an amusing practice when you are in a railway carriage or omnibus with other people to look only at their feet and guess without looking any higher what sort of people they are, old or young, well to do or poor, fat or thin, and so on, and then look up and see how near you have been to the truth.
Mr. Nat Goodwin, the American actor, once described to me how he went to see a balloon ascent at a time when he happened to be suffering from a stiff neck. He was only able to look down instead of up—and he could only see the feet of the people round him in the crowd so he chose among the feet those that he felt sure belonged to an affable kind-hearted man who would describe to him what the balloon was doing.
I once was able to be of service to a lady who was in poor circumstances, as I had guessed it from noticing, while walking behind her, that though she was well dressed the soles of her shoes were in the last stage of disrepair. I don't suppose she ever knew how I guessed that she was in a bad way.
But it is surprising how much of the sole of the boot you can see when behind a person walking—and it is equally surprising how much meaning you can read from that boot. It is said that to wear out soles and heels equally is to give evidence of business capacity and honesty; to wear your heels down on the outside means that you are a man of imagination and love of adventure; but heels worn down on the inside signify weakness and indecision of character, and this last sign is more infallible in the case of man than in that of woman.
Remember how "Sherlock Holmes" met a stranger and noticed that he was looking fairly well-to-do, in new clothes with a mourning band on his sleeve, with a soldierly bearing, and a sailor's way of walking, sunburnt, with tattoo marks on his hands, and he was carrying some children's toys in his hand. What should you have supposed that man to be? Well! Sherlock Holmes guessed, correctly, that he had lately retired from the Royal Marines as a Sergeant, and his wife had died, and he had some small children at home.
SIGNS ROUND A DEAD BODY.
It may happen to some of you that one day you will be the first to find the dead body of a man, in which case you will remember that it is your duty to examine and note down the smallest signs that are to be seen on and near the body before it is moved or the ground disturbed and trampled down. Besides noticing the exact position of the body (which should if possible be photographed exactly as found) the ground all round should be very carefully examined—without treading on it yourself more than is absolutely necessary, for fear of spoiling existing tracks. If you can also draw a little map of how the body lay and where the signs round it were, it might be of value.