Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful
lonely feelings on me arter this. I conquered
'em at selling times, having a reputation
to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but
they got me down in private and rolled upon me.
That's often the way with us public characters.
See us on the footboard, and you'd give pretty
well anything you possess to be us. See us off
the footboard, and you'd add a trifle to be off
your bargain. It was under those circumstances
that I come acquainted with a giant. I might
have been too high to fall into conversation with
him, had it not been for my lonely feelings.
For the general rule is, going round the country,
to draw the line at dressing up. When a man
can't trust his getting a living to his undisguised
abilities, you consider him below your sort.
And this giant when on view figured as a
Roman.

He was a languid young man, which I
attribute to the distance betwixt his extremities.
He had a little head and less in it, he had
weak eyes and weak knees, and altogether you
couldn't look at him without feeling that there
was greatly too much of him both for his joints
and his mind. But he was an amiable though
timid young man (his mother let him out, and
spent the money), and we come acquainted when
he was walking to ease the horse betwixt two
fairs. He was called Rinaldo di Velasco, his
name being Pickleson.

This giant otherwise Pickleson mentioned to
me under the seal of confidence, that beyond
his being a burden to himself, his life was made
a burden to him, by the cruelty of his master
towards a step-daughter who was deaf and
dumb. Her mother was dead, and she had no
living soul to take her part, and was used most
hard. She travelled with his master's caravan
only because there was nowhere to leave her,
and this giant otherwise Pickleson did go so
far as to believe that his master often tried to
lose her. He was such a very languid young
man, that I don't know how long it didn't take
him to get this story out, but it passed through
his defective circulation to his top extremity in
course of time.

When I heard this account from the giant
otherwise Pickleson, and likewise that the poor
girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was often
pulled down by it and beaten, I couldn't see the
giant through what stood in my eyes. Having
wiped 'em, I give him sixpence (for he was kept
as short as he was long), and he laid it out in
two threepennorths of gin-and-water, which so
brisked him up, that he sang the Favourite
Comic of Shivery Shakey, ain't it cold. A
popular effect which his master had tried every
other means to get out of him as a Roman,
wholly in vain.

His master's name was Mim, a wery hoarse
man and I knew him to speak to. I went to
that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart
outside the town, and I looked about the back
of the Vans while the performing was going on,
and at last sitting dozing against a muddy cart-wheel,
I come upon the poor girl who was deaf
and dumb. At the first look I might almost
have judged that she had escaped from the Wild
Beast Show, but at the second I thought better
of her, and thought that if she was more cared
for and more kindly used she would be like my
child. She was just the same age that my own
daughter would have been, if her pretty head
had not fell down upon my shoulder that
unfortunate night.

To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim
while he was beating the gong outside betwixt
two lots of Pickleson's publics, and I put it to
him, "She lies heavy on your own hands;
what'll you take for her?" Mim was a most
ferocious swearer. Suppressing that part of his
reply, which was much the longest part, his reply
was, "A pair of braces." "Now I'll tell you,"
says I, "what I'm a going to do with you. I'm
a going to fetch you half a dozen pair of the
primest braces in the cart, and then to take her
away with me." Says Mim (again ferocious),
"I'll believe it when I've got the goods, and no
sooner." I made all the haste I could, lest he
should think twice of it, and the bargain was
completed, which Pickleson he was thereby so
relieved in his mind that he come out at his little
back door, longways like a serpent, and give
us Shivery Shakey in a whisper among the wheels
at parting.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy
and me began to travel in the cart. I at once
give her the name of Sophy, to put her ever
towards me in the attitude of my own daughter.
We soon made out to begin to understand one
another through the goodness of the Heavens,
when she knowed that I meant true and kind by
her. In a very little time she was wonderful fond
of me. You have no idea what it is to have any
body wonderful fond of you, unless you have
been got down and rolled upon by the lonely
feelings that I have mentioned as having once
got the better of me.

You'd have laughed—or the rewerse—it's
according to your disposition—if you could have
seen me trying to teach Sophy. At first I was
helped—you'd never guess by what—milestones.
I got some large alphabets in a box, all
the letters separate on bits of bone, and say we
was going to WINDSOR, I give her those letters in
that order, and then at every milestone I showed
her those same letters in that same order again,
and pointed towards the abode of royalty.
Another time I give her C A R T, and then
chalked the same upon the cart. Another time
I give her D O C T O R  M A R I G O L D,
and hung a corresponding inscription outside
my waistcoat. People that met us might stare
a bit and laugh, but what did I care if she
caught the idea? She caught it after long
patience and trouble, and then we did begin to
get on swimmingly, I believe you! At first she
was a little given to consider me the cart, and
the cart the abode of royalty, but that soon
wore off.

We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds
in number. Sometimes, she would sit looking at
me and considering hard how to communicate