Apart from this usage, which they practise in common with many thousand most estimable citizens, the Vermont gentleman, and the Kentucky whiskered lady—­or did I say the reverse?—­whichever you like my dear sir—­were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people.  She sat working with her needle, if I remember right.  He, I suppose, slept in the great cabin, which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say, did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you would fancy ought to accompany the sleep of ogres.  Nay, this giant had quite a small appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went forward and ate a sheep or two in private with his horrid knife—­oh, the dreadful thought!—­but in public, I say, he had quite a delicate appetite,) and was also a tea-totaler.  I don’t remember to have heard the lady’s voice, though I might, not unnaturally, have been curious to hear it.  Was her voice a deep, rich, magnificent bass; or was it soft, fluty, and mild?  I shall never know now.  Even if she comes to this country, I shall never go and see her.  I have seen her, and for nothing.

You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some half-dozen on board, she might have dispensed with her red handkerchief, and talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort:  but in covering her chin there was a kind of modesty.  That beard was her profession:  that beard brought the public to see her:  out of her business she wished to put that beard aside as it were:  as a barrister would wish to put off his wig.  I know some who carry theirs into private life, and who mistake you and me for jury-boxes when they address us:  but these are not your modest barristers, not your true gentlemen.

Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with which, her public business over, she retired into private life.  She respected her life, and her beard.  That beard having done its day’s work, she puts it away in her handkerchief; and becomes, as far as in her lies, a private ordinary person.  All public men and women of good sense, I should think, have this modesty.  When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. Brown comes simpering up to me, with her album in one hand, a pen in the other, and says, “Ho, ho, dear Mr. Roundabout, write us one of your amusing,” &c .&c., my beard drops behind my handkerchief instantly.  Why am I to wag my chin and grin for Mrs. Brown’s good pleasure?  My dear madam, I have been making faces all day.  It is my profession.  I do my comic business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and trouble:  and with it make, I hope, a not dishonest livelihood.  If you ask Mons. Blondin to tea, you don’t have a rope stretched from your garret window to the opposite side of the square, and request Monsieur to take his tea out on the centre of the rope?  I lay my hand on this waistcoat, and declare that not once in the course of our voyage together did I allow the Kentucky Giant to suppose I was speculating on