Dear Sir, - Although I cannot claim to be an old reader of your wonderful paper, I am a very interested one. From the informative wording I have ventured to put as a heading to my letter, you will at once jump to the conclusion that I am not as other women are - or ought to be; but I don't thank God for that, nor consider myself the luckiest of mortals because of it. I look upon it as a particularly nasty and bitter sort of medicine that a particularly inexorable destiny, or fate, decreed that I should take; and I take it because I can do no other.
So much for the preamble. Now for the hard facts of the case, and they are, to put it in as few words as possible, that for the past year and nine months I have been, more often than not, called Peggy, which isn't my name, simply because, as a preference to being wheeled about in a bath chair, I prefer to go about on peg legs, because I have no other. And I have got a job, which I can do very well, because it doesn't require a person to be very clever to be able to do it. It is since I have been in this job that I have been tabbed with this name of Peggy, which I heartily dislike. Of course, it is the consciousness of the reason why they do it that makes me resent it. However, that by the way.
I have noticed, in a back number that I have, that one reader, at any rate, said that she, in common with most of your one-legged lady readers, used a peg-leg for getting about the house, but she couldn't thinking of wearing one out of doors. How would she do if she was me, and had to go about on two, because she had no other, and found it expedient to do sol Possibly, she would put her aversion on one side, and brave the worst, the same as I had to da. And if people stared at her, or passed rude remarks while she was passing through the streets, she would perhaps become wise enough to take no notice, and let 'em, putting their conduct down to their ignorance, which is the proper thing to do.
But my peg-legs are not of the crude clumsy shape that the generality of the people associate with the usual order of peg-legs. They are neat, slim, and comely, and a credit to whoever it was that fashioned them; and they are a light wood colour, and reasonably light in weight, and comfortable to wear.
There is a little incident connected with the last day of the first fortnight of wearing them. I had learned to walk on them previously, up and down the passage of my home; and by the time I had been going about on them the previous thirteen days of that fortnight, I had been improving steadily, and thought myself fairly competent, and, in consequence, had possibly got a little careless. Cocksureness is a cussedly dangerous thing. And this is how I paid for it. I had been home at the lunch hour, while I was at home it had come on a sharp shower, whereas it had been sunny and warm. My dress was of bright daffodil satin, and trimmed with green, to correspond with the daffodil leaf. I had on my raincoat and carried my umbrella as usual, and was going along the main
road near the shops for the shelter of the building. All of a sudden and almost before I could realise what was happening, I had stepped on a grating over a basement area of a factory, under which some of the shops are, and my wooden legs had slipped through the bars the whole extent of their slenderness, and I was held a prisoner, and the bottom of my dress and my nice frilly undies got bedraggled in the mess that was on the grating.
Boys laughed and girls tittered, probably as much at the exposure of my underwear as at the grotesqueness of my unpleasant predicament. I was a prisoner and the cynosure of all eyes. However, a lady and a gentleman passing lifted me out of my durance vile, and in a few moments I was able to go on my way, little the worse for the adventure, except that I greatly mourned the messing of the bottom of my dress and my frillies. My umbrella was retrieved, with great care, by the gentleman. I had fortunately secured all the wires at the top before starting out, as the rain had then nearly ceased. Thanking my deliverers, and readjusting my apparel, I went on my way rejoicing, more or less, that the happenings of that day had not been worse. I quite realised that the pegs that had been supporting me might very easily have broken off, or at least, one of them, under the sudden strain that had been put upon them, and I trembled to contemplate what might have been the result. But they had stood the ordeal pretty well, and bore me safely to my destination, little worse for the adventure, except for the polish that got scraped off in their encounter with the grating. The bottoms of my dress and my undies suffered the worst, and I was more particularly annoyed at this as I had planned to go out with two of the girls in the office that evening, and had put them on for that purpose. But I found, when they got dry that the stain showed but slightly, but that the scraping of the polish of my peg-legs showed up brazenly. You will get a laugh at my expense, I suppose, out of this experience, but, as I shall not be there to see there is no need for me to worry about that. So, reaffirming my claim with which I head this letter, that peg-legs are better than none, because experience is the best guide to the formation of an opinion, and I think I can claim to be in an excellent position to know. Wishing your excellent paper the best of everything that is best for it and its readers.
Yours truly,
Peggy.