hand, has to go through life on tip-toe, carrying
his head as high as his neck will lift it, and saying, as it were: "Hi! you
long-legged fellows, don't forget me!" And this very reasonable anxiety to
have "a place in the sun" gives him the appearance of being aggressive and
vain. He is only trying to get level with the long-legged people, just as
the short-sighted man tries to get level with the long-sighted man by
wearing spectacles.

The discomfort of the very tall man is less humiliating than that of the
small man, but it is also very real. He is just as much removed from
contact with the normal world, and he has the added disadvantage of being
horribly conspicuous. He can never forget himself, for all heads look up at
him as he passes. He doesn't fit any doorway; he can't buy ready-made
clothes; if he sleeps in a strange bed he has to leave his feet outside;
and in the railway carriage or a bus he has to tie his legs into
uncomfortable knots to keep them out of the way. In short, he finds himself
a nuisance in a world made for people of five-feet-nine-and-a-half. But he
has one advantage over the small man. He does not have to ask for notice.
The result is that while the little man often seems vain and pushful, the
giant usually is very tame, and modest, and unobtrusive. The little man
wants to be seen: the giant wants not to be seen.

And so it comes about that our virtues and our failings have more to do
with the length of our legs than we think.

ON A PAINTED FACE

The other day I met in the street a young lady who, but yesterday, seemed
to me a young girl. She had in the interval taken that sudden leap from
youth to maturity which is always so wonderful and perplexing. When I had
seen her last there would have been no impropriety in giving her a kiss in
the street. Now I should as little have thought of offering to kiss her as
of whistling to the Archbishop of Canterbury if I had seen that dignitary
passing on the other side of the road. She had taken wing and flown from
the nest. She was no longer a child: she was a personage. I found myself
trying (a little clumsily) to adapt my conversation to her new status, and
when I left her I raised my hat a trifle more elaborately than is my
custom.

But the thing that struck me most about her, and the thing that has set me
writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and
powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others i