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Show The Fare of a Cripple. As I was coming down town the other evening in a car a hunchback entered. en-tered. A friend who sat with me asked me if I had observed that the faces of all hunchbacks and cripples were deformed as well as their bodies. " I mean," he said, "that their faces are pinched and dra wn, and that if you saw the face only, as though an opening in the wall, you would know at once, if you had been an observant man. that it was the face of a cripple. A physician would know it, at any rate." I told him that I had observed the fact and asked him why it was. He replied: re-plied: "Many think that it is simply because cripples do not take enough exerciso, being unable to do so. I do not think that is the reason. Other persons who do not take exercise have white faces, but the Hps are not so thin and close, and there is not that drawn look In all the features. Don't you see that it Is a look of suffering? It may not be of bodily suffering, but I believe that their countenances are that way because of the mental anguish an-guish they endure all through life. You know the effect of an extreme sorrow on the face of a healthy man in one week or a month. How much difference it must make when that sorrow is never absent from him. There aro rare instances where the pinched look is almost overcome by cheerfulness," my friend went on. '-It can never get entirely away. One ol the most cheerful cripples I ever knew was the mayor of a Pennsylvania city for three years. He mixed with men and took an interest in affairs, and although he is a hunchback, he seems really to enjoy life. Ho goes shooting with the boys, and there are few better men in that vicinity with a gun. Ho has color in his face and brightness in his eyes; yet I am satis-fled satis-fled that if, for tho first time, you saw his face only you would say it was the face of a cripple." New York Star. |