by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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¶ Responsibility, if it does not entail too many different kinds of thought and work, is enjoyed by the Osseous.
He can be given a task, a job, a position and he will attend to it. Entrust him with a commission of any kind, from getting you a certain kind of thread to discovering the North Pole, and he will come pretty near carrying it out, if he undertakes it.
If an Osseous decides to do a piece of work for you you can go ahead and forget all about it. No need to advise, urge, watch, inspire, coax and cajole him to keep him at it. He prefers to keep at a thing if he starts it himself. You may have to hurry him but you will not have to watch him in order to know he is sticking to his task. This type starts few things but he brings those few to a pretty successful conclusion.
¶ "Died for a cause" has been said of many people, but those people have in every known instance been possessed of a larger-than-average bony structure.
¶ The pure Alimentive seldom troubles his head about causes. The Thoracic is the type that lives chiefly for the pleasure of the moment and the adventures of life. The Muscular fights hard and works hard for various movements.
But it is the Osseous who dies for his beliefs.
It is the Osseous or one who is largely of this type who languishes in prison through long years, refusing to retract.
He is enabled to do this because the ostracism, jibes and criticism with which other types are finally cowed, have little effect upon him. On the contrary, opposition of any kind whets his determination and makes him keep on harder than ever.
¶ "If you want him to do a thing, tell him to do the opposite," is a well-known rule supposed to work with certain kinds of people.
You have wondered why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, but it is no mystery to the student of Human Analysis.
When it worked, the person you tried it on was an Osseous or one largely osseous in type; and when it didn't he was of some other type.
"Contrary?" complained a man of a bony neighbor recently, "Contrary is his middle name."
"I am open to conviction but I would like to see the man who could convince me!" is always said by a man whose type you will be sure to recognize.
¶ "I don't know what it is but I'm against it," is the inside mental attitude of the extremely raw-boned, angular man or woman.
They often, unconsciously, refrain from making a decision about a thing till the other fellow makes his. That settles it; they take the other side.
Think back over your school-days and call to mind the visage and bodily shape of the boy who was always on the opposite side, who just naturally disagreed, who "stood out" against the others. He was a bony lad every time.
Remember the "Fatty" with a face like a full moon? Did he do such things? He did not. He was amenable, easy-going, good natured, and didn't care how the discussion came out, so long as it didn't delay the lunch hour.
Remember the boy or girl who had the pick of the school for company whenever there was a party, who danced well and was so sparkling that you always felt like a pebble competing against a diamond when they were around? That boy or girl had a high chest, or high color, or a high-bridged nose?and usually all three.
But the one you couldn't persuade, who couldn't be won over, who refused to give in, who held up all the unanimous votes till everybody was disgusted with him, and who rather gloried in the distinction?that boy had big bones and a square jaw?the proof that he was a combination of the Osseous and Muscular types.
¶ To keep the rest of the world from running away with itself, to prevent precipitous changes in laws, customs and traditions, has always been one of the functions performed for society by the bony people.
These people are seldom over-persuaded, and being able to retain a perpendicular position while the rest of the world is being swayed this way and that, they act as society's balance wheel.
The Osseous changes after a while, but it is a long while, and by the time he does, the rest of the world has marched on to something new which he opposes in its turn.
