A Question of Stature

MOST people who think at all about the days grinding by, think of them as ‘bright or gray,’ ‘happy or disappointing,’ ‘interesting or dull.’ For me days are ‘tall or short.’ Tallness or shortness in a day is quite subjective. A tall day is so because during my experiences of that twenty-four hours I feel tall — like a man of stature, like the possessor of physical inches. My short days are the days I try to forget, when schoolboys tower above me, and the little kitchen-maid looks down on my bald spot.

I have tried to decide what internal change makes me feel tall at one time and short the next. It can have little to do with physiology, because sometimes, when I am most healthy, most energetic in nerve and fibre, I feel most wretchedly stunted. On the other hand it cannot be entirely a matter of emotional psychology, for good news may shrink me to stubbiness, or a bitter shock may keep me literally uplifted for days. There should be some unit for measuring ‘human’ inches, a unit which would combine pathology and circumstance, and could compass the feeling of stature.

In corporeal terms I am neither tall nor short, but am cursed with ‘mediumness.’ Height, therefore, is not a harrowing circumstance in my affairs. I am not a success or a failure in anything because of inches or of the lack of them; nor do I mingle with physical culture teachers or sanitarium patients, who might be asking me continually how tall I am. Yet there are days when I feel miserably short, and think of going away to some lonely spot to grow up. That feeling is cause or effect — I cannot tell which — of many minor disasters. As the day grows, annoyances increase and the feeling of shortness keeps pace. I am not a person of immoral days, disgraceful days, or of days of oppression. The tenor of my life is even enough for serenity and easy enough for peace. Why should my stature afflict me?

It seems that the first group of people I approach in the morning may determine the character of my day. They may make me feel taller than they by their actual size, or by their attitude toward me, or they may shrink me with a complex glare, crowd-fashioned and mob-inspired. The sort of group I meet first in the morning is a matter of accident, to be sure, but all moods of mine are accidental and none the less real for that.

Tall days surely are happiest, which again may be cause or effect. Perhaps saints and submissive women, if they share my sensitiveness in this regard, are happiest when they feel shortest. Perhaps they come up to the level of the eyes of the crowd reluctantly. For me, stature is happiness, although I cannot attain it at will nor hold the illusions which sometimes bless me.

I am sure Heaven is a place where every meek little angel feels taller than all the other little angels. It is not a heaven of strife because each angel is sure of his own stature, and there is never any argument about comparisons. I should strive earnestly to reach a heaven like that.