“Now, I suppose, Stone, from looking at those shoes, you can deduce all there is to know about the owner of them.” I remember that Sherlock Holmes wrote once, “From a drop of water, a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other,” but when I heard Fleming Stone's reply to my half-laughing challenge, I felt that he had outdone the mythical logician. With a mild twinkle in his eye, but with a perfectly grave face, he said slowly, “Those shoes belong to a young man, five feet eight inches high. He does not live in New York, but is here to visit his sweetheart. She lives in Brooklyn, is five feet nine inches tall, and is deaf in her left ear. They went to the theatre last night, and neither was in evening dress.” “Oh, pshaw!” said I, “as you are acquainted with this man, and know how he spent last evening, your relation of the story doesn't interest me.” “I don't know him,” Stone returned; “I've no idea what his name is, I've never seen him, and except what I can read from these shoes I know nothing about him.” I stared at him incredulously, as I always did when confronted by his astonishing “deductions,” and simply said, “Tell this little Missourian all about it.” “It did sound well, reeled off like that, didn't it?” he observed, chuckling more at my air of eager curiosity than at his own achievement. “But it's absurdly easy, after all. He is a young man because his shoes are in the very latest, extreme, not exclusive style. He is five feet eight, because the size of his foot goes with that height of man, which, by the way, is the height of nine out of ten men, any way. He doesn't live in New York or he wouldn't be stopping at a hotel. Besides, he would be down-town at this hour, attending to business.” “Unless he has freak business hours, as you and I do,” I put in. “Yes, that might be. But I still hold that he doesn't live in New York, or he couldn't be staying at this Broadway hotel overnight, and sending his shoes down to be shined at half-past nine in the morning. His sweetheart is five feet nine, for that is the height of a tall girl. I know she is tall, for she wears a long skirt. Short girls wear short skirts, which make them look shorter still, and tall girls wear very long skirts, which make them look taller.” “Why do they do that?” I inquired, greatly interested.