Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/25

Rh of commanding ability, which may have been a good thing for them, compelling them to rely upon their own endeavors to make their mark in the world. He who cannot climb to eminence upon his own nose will naturally seek another footing. Addison had a smooth Grecian nose, significantly suggestive of his literary style. Tennyson's nose was long; so are some of his sermons in verse. Julius Caesar, too, was gifted with a long nose, which a writer in a recent review has aptly called "enterprising." That Caesar was an enterprising man some of his contemporaries could feelingly have attested.

The nose of Dante — ah, there was a nose! What words could do it justice? It is one of history's most priceless possessions. One hesitates to say what powers and potencies lay latent in that superb organ ; one can only regret that he did not give more time to the cultivation of its magnificent possibilities and less to evening up matters between himself and his enemies when peopling Hell as he had the happiness to conceive it.

Considering how many of the world's great and good men have been distinguished from their inferiors by noses of note and consequence, it is difficult to understand that such