Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1899 — LINES HIS WALLS WITH LEGS. [ARTICLE]

LINES HIS WALLS WITH LEGS.

Chicago Veteran turns Uncle Sam's Jtqnntr to a Novel Us*. Henry Curtin, a veteran of the civil war living on the West Side, has a room In his residence that impresses all his visitors as a veritable chamber ;of horrors. This Is because Its most conspicuous decoration and ornament is a row of human legs suspended on the walls and entirely circling the room. Mr. Curtin always laughs at the fright of strangers at the first sight of this room, and then*explains that the legs are only artificial ones, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Then he tells them how the legs came to be there. “You see,” says Mr. Curtin, “In ’64 I was so foolish as to try and stop a cannon ball with my right leg. Of course, I wasn’t one, two, three, and the next thing I knew I was In a camp hospital with only one leg left. That ended my soldiering. The Government had me measured for on artificial leg as soon as I was able to be about, and I came home to Chicago. "Well, I discovered that I couldn’t wear the kind of leg the Government gives, owing to some reasons connected with the way my leg was amputated, and the only leg I can wear Is this wooden stump that straps to the thighs. It was In *65 when I got my first leg. In ’66 an express package brought me another. I sat down and wrote the War Department that the legs were of no use to me. and therefore not to send them. They didn’t take a hit of notice of my letter, and in ’67 another leg came. I wrote again to Washington; told them I had three of their legs now that I couldn’t use, and didn’t want them to go on and bankrupt the Government buying me legs. “They never noticed me. In ’6B I got another leg. They began to get In the way around the house, so then I started the labeling and dating of each one, and hanging them up on the walls of my den. They came regularly—one eaeh year. There’s thirty-five there now, and I guess I’ll last long enough to see fifty or more If Uncle Sam doesn’t get tired sending them.”