The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1896-05-08

ceased unclel, asked the Doctor for
story. None of us had ever heard
the Doctor tell story, SO we mentally
concluded that Dufferin had made a
mistake. 1t was quite surprising to
the rest of us, too, for Duferin was
the most careful and conscientious ex-
tractor of stories, "reminiscences, and
personal experiences in the club. The
Colonel raised his fine gray eyebrows
rather inquiringly, the Professor
coughed slightly, and I must confess
that frowned distinctly at Duferin.
wes surprised at his calmness. If the
Doctor bored us Dufferin would fall in
our estimation to an extent that Meth
er he nor any of us cared to contem-
plate. It was quite a critical state of
affairs.
The Doctor was gazing blankly into
the fire. He was the jolliest listener
in the world, and young in spite of
his sixty years. But he was quite a
neophyte at storytelling, and he
looked simply ridiculous, half-lost as
he was in the capacious seat and dark
shadows of the great club-chair. We
held our breath, and, for one, ] am
sure trembled with apprehension.
The Doctor peered around from
either arm of his chair and glanced
carefully at the room.
81 observe" said he with a calfnness
that restored our confidence, to slight
extent, "that you are all large men
save myself. Therefore I will make a
confession rather than tell story.
I wculd no. Gsre to touch urcc the
subjectif there were another moderate
sized man present, for he might be
sufficiently larger than myself Yes !;
it is confession. For all know, I
once committed an act that might
have put me behind prison bars for a
good long period.
"You none of you know the extent
to which small man suffers from his
physical inferiority. I'll wager that
Napoleon envied Murat's immense
size, in spite OF the fact that the lat
ter was merely one of the Emperor S
hnmblest tools. It is the same with
all of US. We all know that we have
three or four times the brain power
that you big men have-'hem, don't
shoot, gentlemen-but there is no use
in concealing, or at least in denying
the fact that we small men envy you
large ones IN the possession of what
the Professor would call your kinetic
energy-your mass multiplied by the
square of your velocity. As ! have
grown, l will not say old but older, for
I still consider myself standing on the
threshold of life, have begun to ap-
preciate the compensations of nature,
and ] now can look at large man, rs
he lumbers up the street, or fops into
chair like an overgrown bag of malt,
with feeling akin to pity. But in
my youth, or rather in my mewling
infancy (say when was about twenty
five years of age my disparity in size
caused me the keenest modification.
This modification would result in fit
of anger when some well-meaning
small man would refer to the story of
David and Goliath and point with
pride to the fact that small men usu-
ally got there just the same. I have
never had any respect for this David.
That business of using a slungshot
was as unfair as it would be to put a
Hotchkiss gun in the pitchers box in
a ball game. It makes my blood boil
to think that David did not go out and
thrash him with his bare knnckles, for
] am quite satisfied that Goliath in
tended to fight fair and square Mar
auis of Queenbury' rules, just like any
other man who is not gentleman.
"Well, when 1 was about twenty
five l had, by dint of hard word and
good luck in having hung out my
single in a particularly unhealthy
neighborhood, arrived at a condition
when I might indulge my pocket-book
in what I may call the anti-fattening
process to a certain extent. In other
words, I could afford to take an after
noon and fve-doilar bill off for
pleasure jaunt once in a while. In
deed, I had begun to read poems about
domestic bliss and occasional love
stories. But befoRe l could permit
myself to think OF marrying l de-
termined TO get. once for all, thor