Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1892-09-30
BRAINS N Il
Arc Short Men the Supporters of the Ta
l1noso

OUcSs
"Exceedingly tall men have ever
very empty heads" writes Lord Ba-
con. Thomas Fuller says more warily,
Gotten the cockloft is empty in those
whom nature hath built many stories
high,'-a metaphor seemingly. bor-
rowed from Bacon's "Nature did
never put her precious jewels INTO a
garnet four stories high" Compare
Fuller's moderate 'oftcn' with Ba-
cons sweeping sever" and 'nevcr,"
which surely smack Of some personal
i'll will. Can it he that the s.wisest,
brightest, mcanest of mankind' was
dealing a sidc-thrust at Elizabeth's
tall tavoritc. my Lord of Leicester?:
Meanwhile there needs no ghost to
tell us that both Bacon and Fuller
were men of middle height. But
now Balzac steps forward in cap and
bells to give us the same "old dog in
a new doublct'-.'Tous les grands
hommcs ont etc petits," says he, and
we defy all England to translate that
phrase--it bears too many meanings.
1t may mean that the tallest of the
tall once wore long clothes: or that
greatest of great men was once small
enough for a cradle.
Socrates was stumpy, also ST. Paul
and Alexander the Great, great only
as a warrior. In stature, both he
and his far more intellectual father,
Phillip of Macedon, scarce reached
middle height. In this regard we
may rank them With the famous
Spartan general, Agcsilaus, with At
lila, the .'Scourge of Cod" broad
shOuldercd, thickset, sinewy, short;
with Theodore H., king of the Goths,
of whom Cassiodorus writes, s.He is
rather short than tall, somewhat
stout, with shapely limbs alike 1.-the
and strong"
Aetius, too. commander-in-chief of
the Roman troops, and prop of the
tottering Roman Empire in the days
of Nalcntinian, was Il mar of low
stature: therein resembling Timour
the Tartar, s~clf-described a, Il ..puny,
lame, dccrcpit little wight. though
Lord of Asia and Terror of the
World;" also the great Condo, and his
pigmy contemporary Marshal LuXcm-
bourg, nicknamed 'thc Little" by
those who admired him for making
Louis the Fourteenth Louis the
Great: who, bye the bye, less his high
hccled shoes and towering wig, dwin-
dies to about five feet six. HUT even
thus pared down to the inches nature
gave him he was agiant compared with
Sir Francis Drake and with Admiral
keppcl-''littlc Keppcl' as every
sailor i'm the fleet fondIy dubbed him
from pure love and admiration.
Whereby Il tale. If bnt TO break the
joe-trnt OF this catalogue. When,
then, Kcppcl-a commodore at "a
was sent to demand am apology from
the Dcy of Algicrs for an insult to
the British flag. he took sn high Il
tone that the dcy exclaimed against
the insolcncc of the British king for
charging IA "bcardlcss boy with such
a message to him. Replied the
beardless boy. "Wcrc my master wont
to take length of beard tor "a test of
wisdom, he'd have sent your dcyship
. hc-goat."
Oliver Cromwell, Claverhouse, and
Mehemet Ali must be content to take
it out in brains, for they all lacked
inches. Two of these great names
naturally suggest that of another
great soldier and nsurper, Napoleon
Bonaparte. lie petit corporal, as his
men lovingly called him, stood about
five feet (F'rench) in his stockings,
say five feet II English. In stature
the Iron Duke beat him Ivy about six
inches, while the five feet four of
Nelson place him midway, or there
abouts. between the victor and the
victim of Waterloo. Sir Christopher
Wren resemblca the smallest of
British birds not in name only. Stay.
ing with Charles Ii. at that mon
arch's Newmarket hunting-iodgc, Sir
Christopher heard him complain that
the rooms lacked height. ..Pardon
me, SIRE" he broke in, sto me they
seem high enough"
SAY, and to me-. too, now" replied
the Merry Monarch. %crouching till his
buttocks nearly touched the floor.
For this king, who snever said a fool.
ish thing and did IL wise one,
would have made two Sir Christie
phcr Wrens. Byron stood five feet
eight inches in his stockings lib
cral allowance of inches for a poet
But his friend Tom Moore iedressc.
this disturbances of the average,
Moore never reached five feet, save II
his verses, the first of which oye the
bye, he published under the per
name, s.I'homas Little" And wher
at length he dotted the mask. som.
impudent wag hailed the charge will
the undcniablc assertion, ssMoore wa.
Little, and littlcis Moore" We trus-
that Mr.. Swinburnc, the nightingal,
Of our 10th century 'singing birds,
will forgive us for branding him Il
every inch a poet, v to the few
ness of his inches Mag
azinc.
The Gods.