THE TALL GIRL AND THE SMALL GIRL.
[Illustration: EXTREMES MEET AND KISS]
“Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature has built many
storeys high,” says quaint old Fuller.
“Long and lazy,” says the proverb.
“Divinely tall,” says Tennyson.
Now in thought go over the tall girls whom you have known. Perhaps they
were not unlike the tall girls known to me.
Cicely—by herself called Thithily—is one of these. She has a little
head atop of a long body, and when she laughs, which she does much,
displays to view two rows of foolishly small teeth. Cicely laughs to
keep herself from crying, for she has a very hard time of it.
_Poor?_
No. She has everything that money can buy, but lacks a thing that money
cannot buy.
Muriel is the poor long girl known to me.
Muriel’s wail is, _There is so much of me to dress_.
When last I saw Muriel, her boots were down at heel, and to
shamefacedness she added—shamefootedness.
Dearest to me of long girls is one Dorothy, big and beautiful and kind,
knowing some things—not many—and wanting to know more.
Said Dorothy one day—
“Is there not such a word as ‘magnanimosity’ for ‘kindness’?”
It was hard to have to tell her that there was not, and that, if ever
such a word as “magnanimosity” shall be, it will certainly not be a
word for “kindness.”
Have you noticed that a big girl mostly has a small girl for her
friend, and _vice versâ_? Shakespeare, who noticed all things, noticed
that. With Helena he puts Hermia, and with Rosalind Celia.
The tall girls of prose-fiction are numerous. For _A_ there is
Blackmore’s Annie, who “never tried to look away when honest people
gazed at her.” For _B_ there is Thackeray’s Beatrix, and there is one
for every other letter in the alphabet.
The “towering big” girl—to put the matter Hibernically—had a great
vogue a few years ago as the heroine of _Trilby_, but, on the whole,
the small girl has been more singled out for loving treatment by
novelists than the tall girl. Dickens had a known preference for her,
and his “little Nell” has eclipsed all big Nells. In the description of
one Ruth, too, it may be noticed that he uses with loving iteration the
word “little”—“pleasant little Ruth! cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet
little Ruth!”
In fiction subsequent to that of Dickens there is a Mary described
thus—“a little dumpty body, with a yellow face and a red nose, the
smile of an angel, and a heart full of many little secrets of other
people’s, and of one great one of her own, which is no business of any
man’s.”
[Illustration: A TALL STORY]
All readers of Kingsley’s _Two Years Ago_ will remember that Mary.
The poets no less than the prose-writers have busied themselves with
the small girl. The mere word _Duchess_ to most people calls up a
picture of stateliness, yet Browning describes a duchess as follows:—
“She was the smallest lady alive.”
In these days of tall girls small girls are apt to fret. There is one
known to me whose case is pitifuller than that of the little fir-tree
in Andersen.
That little fir-tree, you will remember, thought of nothing so much
as growing. The children sitting beside it would often exclaim, “How
pretty and little it is!” _It could not bear to hear that_, says
Andersen.
[Illustration:
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make men better be
BEN JONSON]
The case of the little girl known to me is just by so much sadder than
that of the little fir-tree that she knows that her growing days are
over. When last I saw her she was trying to give length to herself
by a long tail to her dress, but the world was not deluded thus, and
measured her, as naturalists measure the mouse, “not including the
tail.”
Happily a major number of small girls still carry a high heart, knowing
that maids, as well as men, may be “little, very little, but not
insignificant.”
Those words are Sir Walter Scott’s in reference to Thomas Moore, whose
pseudonym, it may be remembered, was at one time Thomas Little.
This is perhaps the place in which to say a word about the persons
whose littleness is bound up with their fame. One of the greatest
generals of all time had for his best known soubriquet “the little
corporal.” Omit the “little” in that case, and the appellation is
robbed of all that gives piquancy to it.
How much there may be in the mere word “little” is shown in the
following—true—story.
A living sculptor of note, a foreigner residing in London, made a
tender group composed of a mother and her child. The mother was
counting the baby’s toes, and beneath the group was carved a legend
which the artist conceived to embody a familiar nursery rhyme. The
legend ran, “One pig went to market.”
[Illustration: _Ah, von leettle peeg—oui, oui!_]
“Sir, sir!” remonstrated an Irishwoman, to whose inspection the group
was subjected, “you’ve made a terrible omission. You’ve left out
‘little.’ No human mother would sing to her babe, ‘One pig went to
market.’”
The foreign sculptor beat his breast.
The ironical use of big for small and small for big is a thing of old
custom. Thus one of the biggest English Johns who ever lived was known
to his contemporaries, and is still known to those who cherish his
memory, as Little John, and it is by a similar pleasantry, according
to a learned writer, that Maria, who in Shakespeare’s play of _Twelfth
Night_ is represented as _a little woman_, is called by Viola “Olivia’s
giant,” and that Sir Toby says to her “Good-night, Penthesilea,”
meaning by Penthesilea _amazon_, if his meaning was not merely (and to
me this seems to be the more likely thing) to twit the little woman by
giving her a long name.
Indubitably there is a beauty in tall stature. On the other hand the
case of small girls _versus_ tall girls is in one agreeable respect
analogous to that of ants _versus_ elephants. Though an ant is not the
smallest creature that is, it looks very small beside an elephant; yet
it has long been voted mentally superior to the elephant; in fact,
Coleridge was wont to speak of the ant as the most “intellectual” of
animals. That may be so, or may not be so; it is established fact,
however, that the majority of women who have distinguished themselves
by their intellectuality have been little women. This is true of
the poetesses, from Sappho to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Among
women-writers of imaginative prose it would be easy, but would be
invidious, to name living ones. Of the great dead it is enough to name
Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen, both of them little women.
Among the many women who have distinguished themselves as rulers Queen
Elizabeth made good in high dignity what she lacked in high stature,
and the same thing is true of the queen who to-day occupies the throne
of England.
[Illustration: TWO GREAT LITTLE QUEENS]
To give one more instance of the great in the little, it was a little
woman who worked the prison reforms which make the name of Elizabeth
Fry a deathless one. The list of great little women is indeed very long.
A word must be said here in reference to a charge much levelled at
small persons, especially small girls and women. They have been said to
be unduly self-assertive, and their sisters have been praised for their
superior meekness. It is not always, but it is sometimes, the case of
the high holly branches and the low. The high holly branches put out
no prickles, because, as the botanists explain, they do not need them.
Above a certain height there is no danger of attack.
In fairness to tall girls it must be allowed that they are sometimes
attacked. Said a little Irishman to a big English girl whom he met
under the stars one summer night—
“I’m wantin’ to light me pipe, miss. _Will ye kindly hand me down a
star?_”
The nonplussed English girl was silent, and Pat the saucy went on his
way unpunished.
[Illustration: The O’Prometheus and his hollow tube]
Gentleness and bigness often go together, but lest any long Meg who may
chance to read this paper lay the too-flattering unction to her soul
that there was never shrew that was bigger than a mouse, be it here
set down that the famous Long Meg of Westminster was a dreaded virago.
There is also no reason to believe that the shrew of Shakespeare’s
comedy—the lady ironically styled “the kindest Kate”—was of small body
dimensions.
It may be allowed, however, that vehemence is more often a
distinguishing mark of little persons than of big ones. Similarly,
little persons are, as a rule, more prone to indulge in a scornful
vein, and here there shall be a thing whispered to the small girl.
The tall are rarely so contemptuous to the small as the small are to
the—smaller. This appears to have been so from of old. Thus it was,
according to an old Greek fable, the ant that said of the mite when
the beasts—including the elephant and the whale—were summoned before
Jupiter, that she—the mite—was so small as to be beneath notice. This
objection—coming from the ant—must have surprised the elephant and the
whale.
To conclude. Since (as the proverb has it) they are not all big men who
reap the harvest, and since, equally, they are not all small men who
do this, the thing of main importance would appear to be not a man’s
physical height; and, as is the case with men in this matter, so is, it
may safely be assumed, the case with the daughters of men.
[THE END.]
DIET IN REASON AND IN MODERATION.
BY “THE NEW DOCTOR.”