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Show ; By THOMAS ARKLE CLARK :2 Dean of Men, University of 3 3 Illinois. 3 Every man, If he had his own way, j would choose to be tall and coin- j manaing in Dg- i ure. It takes a courage o u s a u thor to east his hero in the role of an lnsignifl-cant lnsignifl-cant appearing person. Broad shoulders, heads towering above the crowd, and physical giants In general have always al-ways been In favor. fa-vor. It Is the lit- . tie, wizened man who takes the Insignificant In-significant role. . Men have tried In many ways phys-cally phys-cally to Impress their companions. Long . tailed coats, high heels, high hats, and high manners have all had their day In an attempt to camouflage camou-flage a lack of size and to give a false Impression of height. I suppose It was some such purpose as this which led to the designing of french heels and silk hats, for certainly the first Is not comfortable nor the second sec-ond beautiful. Many great, men have been physically physical-ly small, and most of them have been sensitive as to their size, and have , attempted In one way or another to ! conceal their physical deficiencies. I Imagine Napoleon swaggered. Prac- i tlcally . all the pictures I have ever seen of him shows him In dignified, j almost pompous Isolation. He Is alone on St. Helena; he stands at a distance j from men of greater stature when he reviews his army. He avoids consciously, con-sciously, I have no doubt, the contrast of men of greater stature. Most little lit-tle men whom I have known so try to conceal their' smallness of stature as to emphasize it. They are conscious con-scious of their physical deficiency and by excessive dignity make everyone they meet aware of It. There was Mills, for Instance. scarcely five feet he was. Had he taken tak-en his lack of height as a matter of course, or had he admitted to himself him-self that nature had done him a humorous hu-morous turn in cutting off ten Inches or a foot from his normal size, people peo-ple would have given little consideration considera-tion to his condition excepting pos- 1 Slbly casually to notice It and then at onoa to forget the fact. But Mills wore high hats and high heels. He would walk into a room with his shoulders thrown back and his chest out as If he were Goliath going out to battle. He always suggested a little bantam rooster ready for a fight His entrance always created a ripple of . laughter, or a knowing smile to spread I over the faces of those present. His excess of dignity tended to make him r ridiculous rather than to Impress people peo-ple with his lmportnnce. Physical size really counts for much less than small people think. We expect ex-pect more of a big man than of one undersized. His failure to meet a situation sit-uation awakens more comment than when an undersized individual falls to come up to the mark. If Goliath had not been so great we should not have given David so much credit for putting put-ting an end to him, and David at that time was only a slender, undeveloped undevel-oped boy. If the little man would not assume excessive dignity his under un-der size might be an asset rather than a handicap. ((& ia;9. Western Newspaper Union.) |