This is perhaps the place in which to say a word about the persons whose littleness is bound up with their fame. One of the greatest generals of all time had for his best known soubriquet “the little corporal.” Omit the “little” in that case, and the appellation is robbed of all that gives piquancy to it. How much there may be in the mere word “little” is shown in the following—true—story. A living sculptor of note, a foreigner residing in London, made a tender group composed of a mother and her child. The mother was counting the baby’s toes, and beneath the group was carved a legend which the artist conceived to embody a familiar nursery rhyme. The legend ran, “One pig went to market.” [Illustration: _Ah, von leettle peeg—oui, oui!_] “Sir, sir!” remonstrated an Irishwoman, to whose inspection the group was subjected, “you’ve made a terrible omission. You’ve left out ‘little.’ No human mother would sing to her babe, ‘One pig went to market.’” The foreign sculptor beat his breast. The ironical use of big for small and small for big is a thing of old custom. Thus one of the biggest English Johns who ever lived was known to his contemporaries, and is still known to those who cherish his memory, as Little John, and it is by a similar pleasantry, according to a learned writer, that Maria, who in Shakespeare’s play of _Twelfth Night_ is represented as _a little woman_, is called by Viola “Olivia’s giant,” and that Sir Toby says to her “Good-night, Penthesilea,” meaning by Penthesilea _amazon_, if his meaning was not merely (and to me this seems to be the more likely thing) to twit the little woman by giving her a long name. Indubitably there is a beauty in tall stature. On the other hand the case of small girls _versus_ tall girls is in one agreeable respect analogous to that of ants _versus_ elephants. Though an ant is not the smallest creature that is, it looks very small beside an elephant; yet it has long been voted mentally superior to the elephant; in fact, Coleridge was wont to speak of the ant as the most “intellectual” of animals. That may be so, or may not be so; it is established fact, however, that the majority of women who have distinguished themselves by their intellectuality have been little women. This is true of the poetesses, from Sappho to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Among women-writers of imaginative prose it would be easy, but would be invidious, to name living ones. Of the great dead it is enough to name Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen, both of them little women. Among the many women who have distinguished themselves as rulers Queen Elizabeth made good in high dignity what she lacked in high stature, and the same thing is true of the queen who to-day occupies the throne of England. [Illustration: TWO GREAT LITTLE QUEENS]