I do not give the names of these remarkable people,
unless, by some wondrous chance, in inventing a name I should light upon
that real one which some of them bore; but if you please I will say that
our fellow-passengers whom we took in at Memphis were no less personages
than the Vermont Giant and the famous Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her
son. Their pictures I had seen in many cities through which I travelled
with my own little performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle
taller in his pictures than he was in life (being represented in the
former as, at least, some two stories high): but the lady's prodigious
beard received no more than justice at the hands of the painter; that
portion of it which I saw being really most black, rich, and curly--I
say the portion of beard, for this modest or prudent woman kept I don't
know how much of the beard covered up with a red handkerchief, from
which I suppose it only emerged when she went to bed, or when she
exhibited it professionally.
The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have known gentlemen,
not in the profession, better made, and I should say taller, than the
Vermont gentleman. A strange feeling I used to have at meals; when, on
looking round our little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lady of
Kentucky, the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain, (this
I THINK; but at this distance of time I would not like to make the
statement on affidavit,) and the three other passengers, all with their
knives in their mouths making play at the dinner--a strange feeling I
say it was, and as though I was in a castle of ogres.
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