Compared with the Continental folk, most Englishmen are big, and
therefore, as their "best" suits do not fit in with their character as
written in limbs and shoulders, the Continent thinks us clumsy. The
truth is, it is the Continent that is little.

"Isn't he ugly?" thought Amaryllis, looking down on poor John Duck.
"Isn't he ugly?" Now the top of the wall was crusted with moss, which
has a way of growing into bricks and mortar, and attaching particles of
brick to its roots. As she watched the people she unconsciously trifled
with a little piece of moss--her hand happened at the moment to project
over the wall, and as John Duck went under she dropped the bit of moss
straight on his glossy hat. Tap! the fragment of brick adhering to the
moss struck the hollow hat smartly like a drum.

She drew back quickly, laughing and blushing, and angry with herself all
at the same time, for she had done it without a thought.

Jack pulled off his hat, saw nothing, and put it on again, suspecting
that some one in a passing gig had "chucked" something at him.

In a minute Amaryllis peeped over the wall, and, seeing his broad back a
long way up the road, resumed her stand.

"How ever could I do such a stupid thing?" she thought. "But isn't he
ugly? Aren't they _all_ ugly? All of them--horridly ugly."

The entire unknown race of Man was hideous. So coarse in feature--their
noses were thick, half an inch thick, or enormously long and knobbed at
the end like a walking-stick, or curved like a reaping-hook, or slewed
to one side, or flat as if they had been smashed, or short and stumpy
and incomplete, or spotted with red blotches, or turned up in the
vulgarest manner--nobody had a good nose.

Their eyes were goggles, round and staring--like liquid marbles--they
had no eyelashes, and their eyebrows were either white and invisible, or
shaggy, as if thistles grew along their foreheads.

Their cheeks were speckled and freckled and red and brick-dust and
leather-coloured, and enclosed with scrubby whiskers, like a garden
hedge.

Upon the whole, those who shaved and were smooth looked worse than those
who did not, for they thus exposed the angularities of their chins and
jaws.

They wore such horrid hats on the top of these roughly-sketched
faces--sketched, as it were, with a bit of burnt stick. Some of them had
their hats on the backs of their heads, and some wore them aslant, and
some jammed over their brows.

They went along smok