The Littlest Woman in the World.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 16, 19 October 1910, Page 42

The Littlest Woman in the World.

By

ARTHUR BRISBANE.

THE writer of this article, permitted to choose his own subject, elects to discuss a small coloured lady called Princess Weenie Wee. undoubtedly the smallest mature human being now living. The real and very sensible name of this microscopic young lady is Harriet Elizabeth Thompson. She was born at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. You will look at the pictures in this article before you read the words. We humans, when it. is possible, use the eye rather than our recently acquired power of reading. We have been looking at things for a hundred thousand years or more. Reading has been known to the great majority of us for only one generation. Having studied the pictures and be•onte interested in this smallest, feeblest lull-grown member of our human race, rou will possibly explore this article for .'urther information. With this strange jittle woman for a text and an attraction, one might succeed in fixing attention on almost any important dismal subject. T might discuss here the advisability of having people own the corporations instead of having corporations own the people. You would read on patiently, hoping to hear about the dwarf. If the article dealt exclusively with the trusts and great public questions, you might not read it at all. Were the desire to fix your attention Du strange, foolish speculation about the fourth dimension, or the superfluousness of poverty, hunger, and sorrow in a mercifully governed and very rich world, you would still read doggedly on, much against the grain, hoping in the end to hear about the dwarf and how she happened to have her picture taken beside the street-car step. There’s a lesson in the ‘article for clergymen anxious to fill their churches, for editors that want readers for all human beings that want to fix and hold attention. Begin by pointing out-some little thing, ahd the world will listCij to big things. If this article were headed, “Serious Discussion of Problems Most Important to the Human Race," readers Would skip it with marvellous celerity. But when it presents to the attention of the world a negro woman, eighteen years of age. no bigger than the ordinary four-months-old baby, when it pictures and describes the smallest living adult human creature, everybody reads. No more irritating suspense. We have accepted the statement that an African midget will attract attention, where :* scheme to irrigate the desert of Sahara

would be passed by. We proceed to discuss the strange, fascinating, solemn little African woman that stopped growing when she was just over two feet high. It would be interesting to know how many other human beings earn large salaries because they stopped growing, and how many have been prevented from earning money because they grew’ too big to please the mass of intellectual midgets that pay the world’s salaries. There's nothing complicated in the life story of this little human being. But it is interesting to think of her position in the world to-day and of that position as it would have been a few hundred years ago. Her career and her - earnings illustrate interestingly the fact that the people have become king. In earlier times this dwarf would have been a toy in the dining-hall of some king or duke. She would have made fziany faces to amuse a brutal

master, who would have amused himself further by using her to humiliate and irritate “great" ladies and “great" gentlemen, putting her before them, encouraging her to mock them. In the old time this tiny being would have divided with some jester the honour of amusing a dull-minded, unimaginative sovereign. To-day she divides with various jesters called clowns tiie honour of amusing the dull-minded and unimaginative king that we call. The People. As the toy of the sovereign people she earns her living under the canvas roof of a modern circus, instead of earning that living under the leaden roof of some old stone eastle. Human nature doesn’t change rapidly, We read with contempt of the ruler finding intense delight in the grotesque body of a dwarf or the humiliating antics of a jester, and we, the sovereign people, find our intense delight in the littleness of a midget, the somersaults of a clown, .or the stupid peril of a woman in an automobile whirling in mid-air. See the midget’s hand photographed against the hand of an ordinary human being. Are you plagued with the foolish superstition that makes men and women study linen in their hands and pay cunning palm-readers? Then the lines in the hands of this little dwarf may help to cure you of foolish belief in palmistry. When you take the chocolate-coloured hand of the Princess Weenie Wee. unfold the little lingers and put baek the

thumb, you find lines and wrinkles, “life’’ lines, “head" lines, ‘.‘money’’ lines —lines enough to throw some great palm-reader into ecstasies. What do those lines mean? Nothing at all. Nothing has happened to that little woman, nothing will happen, except death putting an end to her big salary, to her little body, and to Nature’s unfair treatment of her. • The lines in that hand, like the lines —in your own, are lines that were formed in the closed hand of the unborn child, all accidental, like the wrinkling of rose petals in the rosebud. Before you worry about some “life” line that stops short, or some other line that goes too far, think about this wellnamed Princess Weenie Wee, and her complicated, meaningless palm. This curious little woman is often frightened when a child speaks to her suddenly. And she is nervous in the streets with the crowds of human beings. But, circus and a menagerie seem perfectly natural to her. In her imagination, the lion with his roar, the kangaroo with the marsupial reticule in front, the warthog, the giraffe, and the hippopotamus are the commonplaces of everyday life. She looks upon an elephant as man’s natural conveyance, and cannot realise that her everyday eireus companions

seem wonderful and strange to other human beings. She was an interesting little creature as she sat placidly blinking on the broad forehead of the elephant—a strange illustration of the old saying about the dwarf on the giant’s shoulders. The most massive, powerful, and intelligent of the animals, compared with that imperfectly developed, but thinking and planning dwarf, is more primitive and helpless intellectually than a kitten compared with the elephant. The powerful monster swaying his trunk baek and forth good-naturedly as the little dwarf sat upon his head to have her picture taken illustrated strikingly the feebleness of bulky matter and brute force. A fraction of an ounce of brain in the dwarf’s skull, plus thought and its creations, steel and gunpowder, could conquer' and abolish all the elephants of the world. The big elephant didn’t know that, and the little dwarf, as she patted his bony skull didn’t know it either And man, full grown, is equally far from realising the powers of organisation and earth-control hidden within his thinking apparatus. Of all these pictures that which has the most meaning shows the little dwarf mounted on a chair, pressing an electric button. It means that this frail, little being, utterly unable to cope with life in the old conditions, utter! •• u-”’ ' thia world before man had mastered

Nature’s forces, could now do as important mechanical work as the biggeet man living. What would the race have been, what would have happened to human beings had they in the beginning, been all as little as this woman? The race would have been destroyed long ago, and the earth would now be sailing through space without us, the wild animals ruling. jungles growing thicker, deserts and swamps bigger, while waiting for an animal of appropriate size to climb through evolution into the dominating place, to become the earth’s guardian and gardener. A race of creatures as little as this one could not have survived. A big rat could kill her. An ordinary eat would be to her what a tiger is to you. A fox-terrier could carry her away ae a lion carries a heifer. If we should all become as small as she is, now that we rule with steam, electricity, gunpowder, and movable type, the world might still go on and a midget race could rule it. But we couldn’t have started on that basis. We had to bo as big and as powerful as we were, and at the same time not much bigger, not much more powerful physically. If we had had strong claws, big jaws, we could have survived without thinking. Perhaps that is why the gorilla, able to fight a lion, is still only a gorilla, while we, his despised weaker brothers, have become earth-ruling men because our weakness forced us to think. We must seem to her feeble, little mind a ctrange collection of good-natured giants, carrying her to and fro, supplying her with the needed pork-chops, chicken, and red dresses, keeping her warm, just as kind-hearted giant Nature takes care of us, carrying us around in the warm sunlight, giving tig the food and the dresses that we need, keeping us amused and contented with earth, dur circus, happily ignorant of the real cosmic life in which we are all atomic dwarfs.