is this irksome self-consciousness that is the permanent affliction of
the physically small man. Indeed, it is the affliction of any one who has
any physical peculiarity--a hare-lip, for example. Byron raged all his life
against his club-foot, and doubtless that malformation was largely the
cause of his savage contempt for a world that went about on two
well-matched feet. I am sure that if I had a strawberry mark on the face I
should never think about anything else. If I talked to any one I should
find him addressing his words to my strawberry mark. I should feel that he
was deliberately and offensively dwelling on my disfigurement, saying to
himself how glad he was he hadn't a strawberry mark and what a miserable
chap I must be with such an article. He would not be doing anything of the
sort, of course. He would probably be doing his best to keep his eyes off
the strawberry mark. But I shouldn't think so, for I should be in that
unhealthy condition of mind in which the whole world would seem to revolve
around my strawberry mark.

And so with the small man. He lives in perpetual consciousness that the
world is talking over his head, not because there is less sense in his head
than in other heads, but simply because his legs are shorter than the
popular size of legs. He is either overlooked altogether, or he is looked
down upon, and in either case he is miserable. Occasionally his shortage
lays him open to public ridicule. A barrister whom I knew--a man with a
large head, a fair-sized body, and legs not worth mentioning--once rose to
address a judge before whom he had not hitherto appeared. He had hardly
opened his mouth when the judge remarked severely: "It is usual for counsel
to stand in addressing the Court." "My lord," said the barrister, "I am
standing."

Now can you imagine an agony more bitter than that to a sensitive man? I
daresay he lost his case, for he must certainly have lost his head. You
cannot cross-examine a witness effectively when you are thinking all the
time about your miserable legs. And even if he won his case it probably
gave him no comfort, for he would feel that the jury had given their
verdict out of pity for the "little 'un." It is this self-consciousness
that is the cause of that assertiveness and vanity that are often
characteristic of the little man. He is probably not more assertive or more
vain than the general run of us, but we can keep those defects dark, so to
speak. He, on the other