He did not leave them quite as soon as he expected. For several days his wife who was always watching for him, saw him walk up the beach; then one day she watched in vain, for though salmon and whales were there, the poor little boy was not. Each morning she took her two children down to the shore and they stood looking over the waves crying bitterly as the tide went out, because they knew he could not come till it was high again.

Food in plenty they had, and enough for the people of the town also, but the poor little boy never came home any more, for he had grown to be a frog, and was obliged to live in the sea.

[From the Bureau of American Ethnology: Tsimshian
Texts by Franz Boas.]

THE HANDLESS BRIGADE

Have you ever thought what it would be like to have no arms, and be obliged to use your toes for everything? If not, try it on a wet day, and see how much you can manage to do. Yet, there are plenty of true stories of people born without hands, who have contrived by practice to teach their toes not only to supply the place of ordinary fingers, but of very clever fingers, which is quite another matter! I myself once saw a young man in a Belgian gallery busily engaged in copying a picture, and as he had no arms he painted with his toes, seated on a high stool, to place him on the level he wanted. It was near the hour of closing when I happened to notice him, and after a few minutes during which I had watched him spellbound, he got down from his stool, kicked off one shoe, disclosing a stocking neatly cut across the toes, leaving them free. He then shut up his paint box, and picking up his brushes one by one dabbled them in a glass of water that stood near, and wiped them on a cloth, after which he put them carefully in their case, lying on a table.

At the sight of this, I forgot my manners and uttered a cry of amazement, which I think rather pleased the painter, for everyone likes to feel that he can do something better than his fellows. At all events he knew I did not mean to be rude, for he went to his box on the floor, opened it, took up the top card printed with his name, Charles le Félu, from a packet, and presented it to me. Then he put on his hat which was hanging on a peg, bowed and walked away, the sleeves of his coat being so fastened that he looked like a man with his hands in his pockets.

I kept that card till I was married, and obliged to throw away many of my treasures.

James Caulfield, about the beginning of the last century, collected many stories of handless people—who were 'handless' in a very different sense from what we mean, when we use the word. He tells us of a German called Valerius, who was born when Charles II. was on the throne of England, and like my friend the painter, had no arms. This would have seemed a terrible calamity if it had come alone, but before he was out of his boyhood both his parents died, and left him penniless. Happily for Valerius, his mother had been a sensible woman, and insisted that her son should learn to make his toes as useful as fingers. Perched on his high stool, he did his copies like another child, and in later life, when he became famous, often wrote lines round his portraits. But much better than writing copies, he loved to beat a drum. Now beating a drum does not sound nearly so difficult as writing copies, and perhaps he was allowed to do it as a treat when he had said his lessons without a mistake, but with practice he was able to play cards and throw dice as well as any of his friends. He certainly always shaved himself when he grew to be a man, but it is rather hard to believe that in fencing he used his rapier, which he held between his big toe and the next, 'with as much skill as his adversary,' standing on his left leg the while.