his stature, or the Bearded Lady to surmise that I wished to peep under the handkerchief which muffled the lower part of her face.  “And the more fool you,” says some cynic. (Faugh, those cynics, I hate ’em!) Don’t you know, sir, that a man of genius is pleased to have his genius recognized; that a beauty likes to be admired; that an actor likes to be applauded; that stout old Wellington himself was pleased, and smiled when the people cheered him as he passed?  Suppose you had paid some respectful compliment to that lady?  Suppose you had asked that giant, if, for once, he would take anything at the liquor-bar? you might have learned a great deal of curious knowledge regarding giants and bearded ladies, about whom you evidently now know very little.  There was that little boy of three years old, with a fine beard already, and his little legs and arms, as seen out of his little frock, covered with a dark down.  What a queer little capering satyr!  He was quite good-natured, childish, rather solemn.  He had a little Norval dress, I remember:  the drollest little Norval.

I have said the B. L. had another child.  Now this was a little girl of some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, dear madam, as your own darling cherubs.  She wandered about the great cabin quite melancholy.  No one seemed to care for her.  All the family affections were centred on Master Esau yonder.  His little beard was beginning to be a little fortune already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the family.  No one would pay a cent to see her little fair face.  No wonder the poor little maid was melancholy.  As I looked at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fairy tale, and more and more in a cavern of ogres.  Was this a little fondling whom they had picked up in some forest, where lie the picked bones of the queen, her tender mother, and the tough old defunct monarch, her father?  No.  Doubtless they were quite good-natured people, these.  I don’t believe they were unkind to the little girl without the moustaches.  It may have been only my fancy that she repined because she had a cheek no more bearded than a rose’s.

Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have a smooth cheek, a modest air, and a gentle feminine behavior, or to be—­I won’t say a whiskered prodigy, like this Bearded Lady of Kentucky—­but a masculine wonder, a virago, a female personage of more than female strength, courage, wisdom?  Some authors, who shall be nameless, are, I know, accused of depicting the most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines, for ever whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces.  You would have the heroine of your novel so beautiful that she should charm the captain (or hero, whoever he may be) with her appearance; surprise and confound the bishop with her learning; outride the squire and get the brush, and, when he fell from his horse, whip out a lancet and bleed him; rescue from fever and death the poor cottager’s family whom the doctor had given up; make 21 at the