shadow of disappointment pass across my ordinary face, "I mean to say, it
ain't what you would call extry-ord'nary. But there's some 'eads--well,
look at that 'at there. It belongs to a gentleman with a wonderful
funny-shaped 'ead, long and narrer and full of nobbles--'stror'nary 'ead 'e
'as. And as for sizes, it's wonderful what a difference there is. I do a
lot of trade with lawyers, and it's astonishing the size of their 'eads.
You'd be surprised. I suppose it's the amount of thinking they have to do
that makes their 'eads swell. Now that 'at there belongs to Mr. ------
(mentioning the name of a famous lawyer), wonderful big 'ead 'e
'as--7-1/2--that's what 'e takes, and there's lots of 'em takes over 7.

"It seems to me," he went on, "that the size of the 'ead is according to
the occupation. Now I used to be in a seaport town, and I used to serve a
lot of ships' captains. 'Stror'nary the 'eads they have. I suppose it's the
anxiety and worry they get, thinking about the tides and the winds and the
icebergs and things...."

I went out of the shop with my ord'nary 'ead, conscious of the fact that I
had made a poor impression on the hatter. To him I was only a 6-7/8 size,
and consequently a person of no consequence. I should have liked to point
out to him that it is not always the big heads that have the jewel in them.
Of course, it is true that great men often have big heads. Bismarck's size
was 7-1/4, so was Gladstone's, so was Campbell-Bannerman's. But on the
other hand, Byron had a small head, and a very small brain. And didn't
Goethe say that Byron was the finest brain that Europe had produced since
Shakespeare? I should not agree in ordinary circumstances, but as a person
with a smallish head, I am prepared in this connection to take Goethe's
word on the subject. As Holmes points out, it is not the size of the brain
but its convolutions that are important (I think, by the way, that Holmes
had a small head). Now I should have liked to tell the hatter that though