.
The rachitic dwarfs of the first class are incapable of perpetuating
their species, while those of the second category have proved more than
once their virility. A certain number of dwarfs have married with women
of normal height and have had several children, though this is not, it
is true, an indisputable proof of their generative faculties; but we
have instances in which dwarfs have married dwarfs and had a family
sometimes quite numerous. Robert Skinner (25 inches) and Judith (26
inches), his wife, had 14 infants, well formed, robust, and of normal
height.

Celebrated Dwarfs.--Instances of some of the most celebrated dwarfs
will be cited with a short descriptive mention of points of interest in
their lives:--

Vladislas Cubitas, who was King of Poland in 1305, was a dwarf, and was
noted for his intelligence, courage, and as a good soldier. Geoffrey
Hudson, the most celebrated English dwarf, was born at Oakham in
England in 1619. At the age of eight, when not much over a foot high,
he was presented to Henriette Marie, wife of Charles I, in a pie; he
afterward became her favorite. Until he was thirty he was said to be
not more than 18 inches high, when he suddenly increased to about 45
inches. In his youth he fought several duels, one with a turkey cock,
which is celebrated in the verse of Davenant. He became a popular and
graceful courtier, and proved his bravery and allegiance to his
sovereign by assuming command of a royalist company and doing good
service therein. Both in moral and physical capacities he showed his
superiority. At one time he was sent to France to secure a midwife for
the Queen, who was a Frenchwoman. He afterward challenged a gentleman
by the name of Croft to fight a duel, and would accept only deadly
weapons; he shot his adversary in the chest; the quarrel grew out of
his resentment of ridicule of his diminutive size. He was accused of
participation in the Papist Plot and imprisoned by his political
enemies in the Gate House at Westminster, where he died in 1682 at the
advanced age of sixty-three. In Scott's "Peveril of the Peak" Hudson
figures prominently. This author seemed fond of dwarfs.

About the same epoch Charles I had a page in his court named Richard
Gibson, who was remarkable for his diminutive size and his ability as a
miniature painter. This little artist espoused another of his class,
Anne Shepherd, a dwarf of Queen Henriette Marie, about his size (45
inches). Mistress Gibson