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Well, my dears, it is useless for me to expound to you that which I cannot myself understand. If, as I have heard, it is impossible to get the thumb-marks of any two men to be alike, how can we expect their inmost thoughts and feelings to tally? Yet this I can say with all truth, that when I asked your grandmother's hand I did not demean myself as if I were chief mourner at a funeral.

But Lucy seems very uncertain, and in these days young people must decide for themselves. I said that because I didn't want Mrs. Vyse to think us old-fashioned. She goes in for lectures and improving her mind, and all the time a thick layer of flue under the beds, and the maid's dirty thumb-marks where you turn on the electric light. She keeps that flat abominably "

It was the well-marked print of a thumb. "Look at that with your magnifying glass, Mr. Holmes." "Yes, I am doing so." "You are aware that no two thumb-marks are alike?" "I have heard something of the kind." "Well, then, will you please compare that print with this wax impression of young McFarlane's right thumb, taken by my orders this morning?"

I propose to make on ten of the squares counterfeits of the prisoner's thumb-mark, and to fill the remaining ten with real thumb-marks. I propose that the experts should then examine the paper and tell the Court which are the real thumb-prints and which are the false." "That seems a fair and efficient test," said his lordship. "Have you any objection to offer, Sir Hector?"

From Debby, surely, because from Portsmouth, but this elegant modern writing is never hers in the world. She has evidently engaged some friend to write that address, and it's a neat one." "Father, you said there was earth about it; how can that be?" broke in Hope, scarcely mollified, as yet. He held it up, and pointed to its worn condition, and two or three black thumb-marks.

With a liberal allowance of thumb-marks, he turned the pages over and read, "'the rural silence that is not a poet's luxury but a practical need for all men. Yes, it is the same book." Smiling pleasantly over the discovery, he handed it back to the owner. "And is it true?" "I beg your pardon?" "Is it true that rural silence is a practical need?" "Don't ask me!" "Have you ever tried it?" "What?"

All his leisure for the next few days was put in laboriously constructing, on large sheets of foolscap, the following letter, in which the thumb-marks and blots were more conspicuous than the "pot-hook" letters: dEER shoRty: doNt 4git thAt REblE guN u promist mE. thAir wAs An oRful time wheN i giv um yorE lEttEr. missis klEgg shE cride. mAriAr shE sEd did u EvEr No Ennything so Ridiklus.

From sub-stations constantly engaged in checking back thumb-marks and numbers, an incessant stream of information would come, of births, of deaths, of arrivals at inns, of applications to post-offices for letters, of tickets taken for long journeys, of criminal convictions, marriages, applications for public doles and the like.

They were given various checks, including one to certify that they need not have their heads cropped; and when they had given their thumb-marks, learnt the number corresponding thereunto, and exchanged their shabby middle-class clothes for duly numbered blue canvas suits, they repaired to the huge plain dining-room for their first meal under these new conditions.

But there are certain subtle impressions, often difficult to define, which are more potent than foot-prints and thumb-marks. A man's words, for example, are often of far less importance than his manner of uttering them. A man's personality is the stamp by which he declares his status among his fellows, and everybody is entitled to scan it that he may weigh and consider and judge.