THE GIFTS OF CHANCE


The testamentary arrangements of eccentric people must, from time to
time, have put their legatees in possession of some very queer property.
I call to mind an old gentleman who bequeathed to a distant relative the
products of a lifetime of indiscrimate collecting; which products
included an obsolete field gun, a stuffed camel, a collection of bottled
tapeworms, a fire engine, a church pulpit and the internal fittings of a
public-house bar. And other instances could be quoted. But surely no
legatee ever found himself in possession of a queerer legacy than that
which my poor friend Challoner had bequeathed to me when he made over to
me the mortal remains of some two dozen deceased criminals.

The bequest would have been an odd one under any circumstances, but what
made it much more so was the strange intimacy that became established
between me and the deceased. To the ordinary observer a skeleton in a
museum case or in an art school conveys no vivid sense of humanity. That
this bony shape was once an actual person, a Me, that walked abroad and
wore clothes, that loved and hated, sorrowed and rejoiced, that had
friends and lovers, parents and perhaps children; that was, in short, a
living man or woman, occurs to him but vaguely. The thing is an
osteological specimen; a mere anatomical abstraction.

Now these skeletons of Challoner's were quite different. Walking down
the long room and looking into the great wall-case, I was confronted
with actual individuals. Number One was Jimmy Archer, who had tried to
steal the "blimy teapot." Number Three was the burglar Fred; I could
tell him by the notch on his fifth rib that his comrade's bullet had
made. Number Two was the man who had fired that shot, and Number Four