July Up at Tientsin, where at the moment close attention is paid to straws which show whence the wind blows, men are talking of the miraculous appearance of a five-legged tortoise. Those who aver that there is substance in the story are inclined to take it '8 an omen of flood to come—or, some calamity of that kind, Here is to be found the olden brace tice for explaining freaks of nature, It contrasts vividly with the way of the moderns who pretend to be sceptics. The man, versed in folk-lore, oracles and superstition, will at once derive from the waywardness of nature material for making the flesh of his fellow-men creep. He takes for his text the view: "These things are beyond all use, and 1 do fear them" and promptly proceeds to pass his fear on to other people, The consequence is that amiable monstrosities such as tortoises with five leg: become objects of abhorrence, and lead a harassed. existence. This is manifestly unfair. If tt were a procedure impartially, prescribed, there might be some defence of it. If, for ex: men with double chins wer some justice in the But men with double often allowed to amass huge fortunes and feed appetite which would ruin unive caterers, working exclusively on' a table dhéte basis. Lean men, again, may be dismissed "dangerous", Nothing worse befalls them: if their presence were taken to indicate the pri bability of a serious disaster then they might be outlawed like any other prank of nature and the world would be saved from mich anxiety.
Perhaps the modern way, after all, is better. It does not subscribe to the omen theory. It takes the five-logged tortoise to its bosom, as it were. For it would put. that estimable creature in the freak show and make the public pay to see it. Or it adopts it as a coat-of-arms and thereby dispenses ancestral dignity on people who are in urgent need of forbears to justify their existence, The divinator, it is true, made a modest com-potence out of his discovery of the meaning of portentous apbearances, That meant that the pecuniary profits were strictly, limited in their incidence. Now-days the freak show benefits, not only the freak, by providing that worthy object with a liv Iihood, but also the public well as the proprietor sot the freak show. There is a danger in praising this method too much, When freaks are scarce the temptation to create them is great. Artemus Ward showed how the temptation worked. it would be terrible, for example, if the public were to be hoodwinked by the announcement: "the oerest millionaire in Chicago", "the palest red' from Moscow" or "the honestest crook in Soho," and, after paying its hard-earned entrance fees, to see nothing more than a collection of simple mediocrities. Still the freaks have to be careful, Uniform 98 the world is getting nowadays, when the bowler hat is worn in, London as well as Kabul ang Angora, it™is also developing
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.