If under “five foot six,” Cæsar himself could find no favour in the eye of the recruiting-sergeant, and Alexander the Great would be allowed to bestride no Bucephalus in a dragoon regiment of modern times. Thus, both they who get too much, and they who get too little, in Dame Nature’s apportionment bill, as well as those who, though abundantly endowed, are not well made up, have divers reasons for grumbling, and for wishing that a more perfect uniformity prevailed.
Some of the troubles which arise from giving a man more than his share in altitude, find illustration in the subjoined narrative:
Linkum Langcale is a subject in extenso. He is, to use the words of the poet, suggested by his name,
“. . . . . . A bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out:”
and, in speaking of him, it is not easy to be brief. Linkum is entirely too long for his own comfort—something short—if the word short may be used in this connection—something short of the height of the Titans of old, who pelted Saturn with brickbats; but how much, has never yet been ascertained, none of his acquaintances being sufficiently acquainted with trigonometry to determine the fact. He is one of those men who, like the gentle Marcia, “tower above their sex,” and must always be called down to their dinner, as no information can be imparted to them unless it be hallooed up, and in conversing with whom, it is always necessary to begin by hailing the maintop.
There is not, however, more material in Linkum than enough for a man of ordinary length. The fault is in his not being properly made up. He is abominably wire-drawn—stretched out, as Shakspeare says, almost to the crack of doom. It is clear that there has been an attempt to make too much of him, but the frame of the idea has not been well filled out. He is the streak of a Colossus, and he resembles the willow wand at which Locksley shot his gray goose shaft in the lists of Ashby de la Zouche. The consequence is, that Linkum is a crank vessel. If he wore a feather in his cap, he would be capsized at every corner; and as it is, he finds it very difficult to get along on a windy day, without a paving stone in each coat-pocket to preserve the balance of power. He is, however, of a convivial nature, and will not refuse his glass, notwithstanding the aptitude of alcohol to ascend into the brain, and so to encumber it as to render a perpendicular position troublesome to men shorter than himself. When in this condition, his troubles are numberless, and among other matters, he finds it very difficult to get a clear fall, there being in compact cities very little room to spare for the accommodation of long men tumbling down in the world.
One evening Linkum walked forth to a convivial meeting, and supped with a set of jolly companions. Late at night a rain came on, which froze as it fell, and soon made the city one universal slide, sufficiently “glip” for all purposes, without the aid of saw-dust. Of Linkum’s sayings and doings at the social board, no record is preserved; but it is inferred that his amusements were not of a nature to qualify him for the safe performance of a journey so slippery as that which it was necessary to undertake to reach home. No lamps were lighted, they who were abroad being under the necessity of supposing the moonshine, and of seeing their way as they walked, or of gathering themselves up, when they fell, by the lantern of imagination.
“Good night, fellers,” said Linkum, at the top of the steps, as the door closed after him.
He pulled his hat over his eyes determinedly, buttoned his coat with resolution, and sucked at his cigar with that iron energy peculiar to men about to set forth on their way home on a cold, stormy night. The fire of the cigar reflected from his nose was the only illumination to be seen; and Linkum, putting his hands deep into his pockets, kept his position on the first step of the six which were between him and the pavement.