Dear Sir, A large number of your readers have already said a great deal in praise of the short skirt and the high heel. I don't think a great much more need be said to prove the undoubted fact that both of these are extremely useful in adding to the charms of the modern girl and attracting the modern male. But I have often wanted to write to your columns to quote my own case, because I think my case is a little bit out of the ordinary and to my mind shows conclusively what an important part pretty clothes and dainty footwear can play in a girl's life. I am a girl of twenty-three, pretty and vivacious, with very fair shingled hair and a slim figure. Not so bad, you will say. But there is a catch, and a very big and unfortunate catch. I happen to have only one leg; I lost my left leg at the thigh nearly five years ago, as the result of a pillion accident, and have had to walk with crutches ever since. I am not going to trouble you with an account of my feelings at the time, or describe how I eventually got over things. I might easily have let myself drift; but, thank Heaven, I didn't. I was always passionately fond of pretty clothes; and my accident, I am truly glad to say, didn't make any difference in that respect. I dressed as fashionably and as daringly as ever in the daintiest of crepes and georgettes, bought the most expensive silk stockings I could afford, and always in the latest shades, and had the daintiest shoes and slippers made for me, all with heels varying from three to four or five inches in height. When the short skirt came in again I was delighted in spite of having only one leg; and even though some of my girl friends tried to dissuade me, I took a curious kind of pleasure in being as daring as possible in this respect. At the present moment none of my frocks reach lower than the knee, and I have some for indoor wear that fall no longer than a full inch above the knee. I fully realise that people stare at me when I pass them on my crutches in a knee-length, entirely sleeveless silk georgette frock that fits me like a glove, worn over only the thinnest of silk slips and very short, skin-tight knickers, my leg revealed to the knee in a filmy silk stocking and a slender four-inch heel on my little open sandal; but if they like to stare, I don't mind. The thing that matters is that my way of dressing has not only brought a great deal of pleasure into my life, but, strange as it may seem, has gained for me, in spite of my handicap, quite a lot of admiration from the opposite sex. I think I may safely say that I have as many boy friends as any ordinary girl, and have been taken out to dinner or the theatre or the pictures, etc., just as often as anybody else. I am at present engaged to a very nice boy, and this is the second time I have been engaged since my accident. One would think that a girl with only one leg would be avoided by the boys, but, honestly, I have never found it so. I put it all down to my love of pretty clothes and my knack of dressing daintily. Some months ago one of your readers wrote a very interesting letter, in which he described the swimming experiences of his wife, a lady like myself, with only one leg. I was naturally extremely interested, though I don't swim myself and I fully intended to write a letter about myself at the time, but I kept putting it off and never wrote. I should very much like to see other letters from this gentleman giving his wife's experiences and hope he might be persuaded to write again some day. Another thing I was interested was an article entitled "One-legged Dancers", some time back. I cut it out and still have it by me. In it the writer stated that so far as he knew, no one-legged lady performer had ever appeared in England. He may be interested to know that my fiancee quite distinctly remembers, when a boy, seeing in the Tower Grounds, New Brighton, near Liverpool, a trio of trapeze artists, one man and two girls, all three having only one leg each. He does not remember anyone objecting to the show in the least, though all three performers were, of course, dressed in tights, and the stumps of their missing limbs were plainly visible owing to them wearing this type of costume. However, I had better close this letter or it will be too long. I hope you will be able to publish it, and I shall look forward to seeing it in your columns. With best wishes for the continued success of your splendid little paper,
Yours sincerely,
"One-Legged But High-Heeled."