When we
look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to
fill it. When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not
only our foreheads, but all our dimensions. If I see two men wrestling, I
wrestle too, with my limbs and features. When a country-fellow comes
upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the
bumpkin expression. There is no need of multiplying instances to reach
this generalization; every person and thing we look upon puts its special
mark upon us. If this is repeated often enough, we get a permanent
resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it.
Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed.
It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and I have
often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular
movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of its
handle.
All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that the
Little Gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her soul in
her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round the
company.
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