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.
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.
