To give one more instance of the great in the little, it was a little woman who worked the prison reforms which make the name of Elizabeth Fry a deathless one. The list of great little women is indeed very long. A word must be said here in reference to a charge much levelled at small persons, especially small girls and women. They have been said to be unduly self-assertive, and their sisters have been praised for their superior meekness. It is not always, but it is sometimes, the case of the high holly branches and the low. The high holly branches put out no prickles, because, as the botanists explain, they do not need them. Above a certain height there is no danger of attack. In fairness to tall girls it must be allowed that they are sometimes attacked. Said a little Irishman to a big English girl whom he met under the stars one summer night— “I’m wantin’ to light me pipe, miss. _Will ye kindly hand me down a star?_” The nonplussed English girl was silent, and Pat the saucy went on his way unpunished. [Illustration: The O’Prometheus and his hollow tube] Gentleness and bigness often go together, but lest any long Meg who may chance to read this paper lay the too-flattering unction to her soul that there was never shrew that was bigger than a mouse, be it here set down that the famous Long Meg of Westminster was a dreaded virago. There is also no reason to believe that the shrew of Shakespeare’s comedy—the lady ironically styled “the kindest Kate”—was of small body dimensions. It may be allowed, however, that vehemence is more often a distinguishing mark of little persons than of big ones. Similarly, little persons are, as a rule, more prone to indulge in a scornful vein, and here there shall be a thing whispered to the small girl. The tall are rarely so contemptuous to the small as the small are to the—smaller. This appears to have been so from of old. Thus it was, according to an old Greek fable, the ant that said of the mite when the beasts—including the elephant and the whale—were summoned before Jupiter, that she—the mite—was so small as to be beneath notice. This objection—coming from the ant—must have surprised the elephant and the whale. To conclude. Since (as the proverb has it) they are not all big men who reap the harvest, and since, equally, they are not all small men who do this, the thing of main importance would appear to be not a man’s physical height; and, as is the case with men in this matter, so is, it may safely be assumed, the case with the daughters of men. [THE END.] DIET IN REASON AND IN MODERATION. BY “THE NEW DOCTOR.” PART III. THE DINNER. At what time do you dine? Dinner is the chief physiological event in the day. Therefore the answer to the question “At what time do you dine?” is a very important one, although the true reason for the answer is not often understood.