A Typical Jail Knee. (From the Notes of Tristram Tangent, of Jail.) Behold, as I do, my knee - a typical Jail knee, they'll say - lumpy as a potato, or resembling an object wadded together hastily out of clay, they'll say - but see, the neat twin dimples cleft below the bone when I straighten my leg! See, the rounded stone of the patella! Oh, but that's a bold knee, a brave knee, a knee with an honest face, and it is true that however much a knee's owner may indulge in murder and unwanted buggery the knee itself retains its purity of character. A knee dysfunctional is a sorry knee, but a knee that flexes cleanly is a knee smiling with pleasure - and here I observe that a knee may have more nobility of character than a whole body and brain together, for I know many body-and-brains who regard the dysfunction of their lives with delight and do use their Bad Luck as an excuse for Sloth, in which they take ignorant joy - I am idle, they say, and hurrah! now I may lie in my bed and never trouble myself to stir my limbs again. But a knee does not confuse laziness with pleasure - for it knows that travel leads to an interesting life of change and fortune. Onward! cries the knee sternly - let me move this leg forward! Why, by contriving to ache with prolonged inaction, my knee has often driven me out of my chair and into the streets where I find myself surrounded by the flux and flow of humanity, namely, pick-pockets, glass-blowers, ne'er-do-wells, flower-sellers, scabs, odgetts, murderers, theatre owners, and a woman with the flippers of a turtle who appears on the corner near my house every day as the sun is going down and sings in a clear, sweet voice. She is from Cumber Poidy, she says, and her mother ate sea-turtle before she was born, which meal caused her daughter to be brought into this world without the conventional limbs. These excursions inflame my mind with wonderful thoughts - indeed, is every new thought not wonderful? - and all thanks to the dedication of my knees!