How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

at Steinmetz with his crippled body, to prove this point for yourself. We well remember a charming woman who suffered an inferiority complex because she believed her nose was too long. In order to cure her we made a collection of the portraits of famous men and women, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, Tasso, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Rous¬ seau, Voltaire, Mozart, Chopin, Wagner, Elizabeth of England, and Washington, all of whom had abnormally long noses, and finally convinced her with an old Latin inscription, “ Non cuique datum est nasum habere ”—not everyone can have a nose !—which served to demonstrate the venerable aristocracy of long noses. While we are on the subject of ugliness and beauty as possible causes of the inferiority feeling, a word about the evil consequences of too much beauty is in order. A very beautiful child is under a severe handicap, and parents should take the utmost precautions lest the old proverb, mens Sana in corpore sano, turn out to be mens insana in corpore beliissimo. Every psychiatrist and teacher sees children who have been so spoiled because of their beauty that they are incapable of living in a real world. It is so easy to say to a beautiful child, “My, what exquisite eyes ! ” or “ What a lovely face you have S ” or “You are almost too pretty to be a boy ! ” We fall into these errors because of the undoubted aesthetic appeal of a beautiful body, without thinking what the possible psychological consequences of our words may be for the child. A beautiful child grows up with the feeling that his or her beauty is the sole contribution that society requires of him. He develops the pattern of a beautiful prince or princess in a drab world, and he assumes the false philosophy that solely because he is beautiful the world owes him a living. And usually he wants a very good living, too. He cultivates his beauty as his sole weapon of offence and defence. While it is true that many a person who has been ugly in childhood acquires