How near the sound of the guns
had come!
ON SHORT LEGS AND LONG LEGS
A day or two ago a soldier, returned from the front, was loudly inveighing
in a railway carriage against the bumptiousness and harshness of the
captain under whom he had served. "Let me git 'im over 'ere," he said, "and
I'll lay 'im out--see if I don't. I've 'ad enough of 'is bullyin'. It ain't
even as if 'e was a decent figure of a man. 'E don't stand more'n
five-feet-two. I could knock 'im out with one 'and, and I'd 'ave done it
before now only you mustn't out there. If you did you'd get a pound o' lead
pumped into you."
Now, I dare say little five-feet-two deserved all that was said of him, and
all he will get by way of punishment; but the point about the remark that
interests me is the contempt it revealed for the man of small stature.
There's no doubt that a little man starts with a grievance, with an
aggravating sense of an inferiority that has nothing to do with his real
merits. I know the feeling. For myself, I am just the right height--no
more, no less.
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