Dear Sir, - It seems a long time since any letters appeared in your issues about or from monopedes, and some of your readers would welcome many more, especially if some were accompanied by really good photographs.
I would like to tell you of an experience I had on an express train.
I entered a compartment just before the train left, and noticed an extremely pretty girl, very well dressed, sitting in the corner opposite me. I became absorbed in my paper, and then fell asleep to be awakened by the attendant calling out that lunch was served.
I got up with a start and was surprised to see the girl was standing up, reaching on the rack for a pair of crutches, and then I noticed that she was balancing on one leg only, as her right leg was missing.
She moved down the corridor towards the dining car, and I followed. She had some difficulty in negotiating the narrow passage owing to the oscillation of the train and to the fact that she wore on her foot only a spike-heeled black patent-leather Court shoe.
In crossing from one carriage to the next, where the movement was greatest, she stumbled and lost her grip of her crutch, which fell. I saved her from falling, picked up her dainty crutch and placed it under her armpit, for which I was rewarded with a charming smile and her thanks.
We lunched together, and I piloted her back to her compartment. When she had regained her seat she told me that she had first suffered a broken right leg, which had resulted in a serious shortage of the limb, and her foot had become perfectly stiff and straight, with her toes pointing downwards, and even then she could not touch the ground by some inches. She was thus obliged to use crutches.
Some time later she met with a motor accident, and this same leg was smashed up at the knee, and she then had to have a high amputation of the leg, which had been no use except as an ornament.
She had in the past been very proud of her legs as they were beautifully shaped. As some compensation for the loss of one of these, she and her friends had admired so much, she resolved to make the most of her remaining one by always clothing her left leg in a silken stocking and wearing the highest of high heel on her single foot, thereby trying to forget her sadly crippled state.
She had absolutely refused to wear an artificial leg, and had become very happy on her slender black crutches, and never grumbled that she was a crippled one-legged girl, as she knew that her appearance was unharmed by the use of them; and so must certainly thought.
Yours truly,
A Mere Male.