But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not
concern itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is
revelation. Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the
duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have
seen--even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that you
would not have seen about this young man, and the thing of the
greatest moment to this story, the thing that must be told if the
book is to be written, was--let us face it bravely--the
Remarkable Condition of this Young Man's Legs.
Let us approach the business with dispassionate explicitness. Let
us assume something of the scientific spirit, the hard, almost
professorial tone of the conscientious realist. Let us treat this
young man's legs as a mere diagram, and indicate the points of
interest with the unemotional precision of a lecturer's pointer.
And so to our revelation. On the internal aspect of the right
ankle of this young man you would have observed, ladies and
gentlemen, a contusion and an abrasion; on the internal aspect of
the left ankle a contusion also; on its external aspect a large
yellowish bruise. On his left shin there were two bruises, one a
leaden yellow graduating here and there into purple, and another,
obviously of more recent date, of a blotchy red--tumid and
threatening. Proceeding up the left leg in a spiral manner, an
unnatural hardness and redness would have been discovered on the
upper aspect of the calf, and above the knee and on the inner
side, an extraordinary expanse of bruised surface, a kind of
closely stippled shading of contused points.
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