Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/234

 no food taken by the visible mouth would satisfy.

Ancestors of Miss Biffin we can more literally believe in. A man of forty lived in Paris not long before Doctor Schenck made his collection of cases, who, being without arms, could grasp an axe with his shoulders, neck, and chin, and throw it as far as his neighbours, or in the same way hold and crack a whip with the best of them. Although he had no hands to keep from picking and stealing, he was eventually condemned for theft, and broken on the wheel. He used his toes, it is said, for eating and drinking. Dion tells that one of the gifts sent to Augustus from the Indians was a youth without arms, who used his feet skilfully in shooting with the bow. Schenck himself saw an armless woman doing needlework with her feet, and Cardan saw an armless man throw a spear, stitch a garment, eat, drink, write, and thread a needle. Two youths with the same defect played cards (but not together), one using his feet, the other his mouth and chin. An armless woman at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 'fifteen fifty-six not only painted letters elegantly with her feet, but made with her toes very ingenious toys.

A famous armless humpback was Thomas Schweicker, a Suabian, born in 1545, whose portrait we have at the age of fifty-three. He was the Biffin of Schenck's time, in highest repute for handwriting—or, shouldn't we say, footwriting?—with his toes, and for the elegant designs which he drew round specimens of his penmanship. He excelled also in arithmetic and chess-playing, architectural carvings, delicate cutting out, bookbinding, crossbow shooting. He cut for himself his slices of bread with his feet, carried food and drink to his mouth, and with his feet also mended his own pens when he wrote. A hundred years earlier there had been a man living to old age, under the care of his landlord, who had learnt to be very helpful to himself, though he had no right hand, three fingers joined together for a left hand, and no toes upon his feet. He learnt to write well, and do many things with his misshapen and imperfect left hand.

From the people without feet we pass to the records of joint births like that of the Siamese Twins. Some have been joined by the neck, some by the forehead, some by the chest, some by the back; there are plenty of all kinds. The most interesting of these was a man of adult years, who, in 1519, showed himself in Switzerland with another and smaller body hanging from his breast, alive and complete in all parts from the neck downwards; but the head, if there was any, seemed to be contained within his chest. He bared his chest and displayed what seemed to be a living child, which had forced its head through it. The rest of Dr. Schenck's collection we will leave to the imagination of any one who, having brought himself into a state of temporary lunacy, will confine himself for six weeks to a diet of pork chops. For, after winding up the catalogue of human monsters, with a creature very like a libelled and caricatured harpy, he gives his mind to the monstrosities of brutes.

Sir George Lewis's committee, appointed in 1858 to consider the question of the new Law Courts, made their report in favour of what is now known as the Carey-street site, the question appeared to be settled, and the destination of the Palace of Justice of the future to be finally determined; indeed, the selection at that time was universally approved, and the committee were considered to have chosen the best of the three alternatives submitted to them. The objections both to the Westminster and Lincoln's-inn sites, were sufficiently grave to leave either but few advocates; and, although it was even then admitted that the Strand and Carey-street block scarcely fulfilled all the conditions that might have been exacted, it was so clearly better than the other positions proposed, that the public readily agreed with the decision of the committee.

Matters of this sort do not usually move rapidly in this land of How Not To Do It, and accordingly it was not until 1865, or seven years after the appointment of the selection committee, that Parliament passed the Acts giving powers of compulsory purchase, and finding funds for the purpose. The suitors' fees fund was justly held to be public money, available for the great national purpose contemplated; and by appropriations from that fund the new Law Courts are to be built. The question of the cost of site and buildings now gave rise to much discussion, and Parliament was extremely desirous of seeing its way to some satisfactory estimate of the expenditure to be sanctioned by the Acts proposed. A lively recollection of the remarkable discrepancy between the estimates for, and the actual cost of, their own house, and, for that matter, of most other great public works in London, no doubt caused Parliament to dwell with particular care on this point; but the means devised to gain the end required were, to say the least, highly remarkable. By the Acts as they were ultimately passed, the powers for compulsory purchase were to remain in abeyance, until a certificate had been furnished by the commissioners that they had received satisfactory evidence that the probable cost of the lands and buildings would be covered by a million and a half of money. The commissioners, receiving a certificate from a well-known architect to the desired effect, and probably thinking a million and a half a tolerably respectable sum, expressed themselves satisfied that the work could be satisfactorily done for such sum, and, being then possessed of full powers, set vigorously to work.

The area chosen, comprised every kind of neighbourhood. Along the Strand, respectable old-established shops were the rule, diversified by not more than the usual proportion of public-houses. If the entrance courts