engrossment over the contemplation of his
own bodily defect. It may be good, as the
familiar quotation says,

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels"—

but who shall say that the lady, who lives at
this moment behind a curtain and a barrel
organ in one of the main thoroughfares of
London, is not proud of the admiration
excited by her whiskers, and flattered by the
pains taken to convince men of her sex.

Besides, what does it matter whether we
ought to treat with kindness and consideration
men and women who are afflicted with some
strangeness in their bodies, to lighten their
own consciousness of defect, to remove all
greedy stare from them in private life, and
with a human readiness lighten for them the
burden of their toil wherever it may press
severely on an infirm frame,— what does it
matter whether we ought to do all this? We
do not do it. The fat boy or the small boy
is exhibited by his friends, because it is well
known that there are plenty who will pay for
liberty to stare. Attendance at such exhibitions
is not peculiar to the untrained rabble
that has only pence to pay, there is a trained
rabble ready with shillings and half-crowns.
The classes that excel in social courtesy set
little example to the rude; they do not
discourage by their absence these displays which
may or may not be unsocial and uncivilized;
that question does not concern Podgy Dick.
"Whenever I get together my Grand Combined
Entertainment, at the Theatre Royal, there
will be quite as good attendance in the dress
boxes as in the gallery.

I, therefore, invite all men who are uncommonly
fat, uncommonly lean, uncommonly
tall, uncommonly small, or uncommonly
anything at all as to their persons, to come
forward and establish an entertainment under
my directions. I am prepared to become
lessee of her Majesty's Theatre in addition
to Drury Lane, and hold both houses, for I
will fill them both, if curiously-bodied men
and women will only be kind enough to come
forward and accept engagements.

But I must have real wonders: no dwarf
under fifty years of age and over two feet
high; no stout man under fifty stone; no
hungry man who has a smaller appetite than
Domerz, the Pole. Perhaps, to make things
clear and prevent unnecessary trouble, I had
better describe by an example or two, the
sort of men I want.

To begin with the person just mentioned,
Charles Domerz the Pole. He was a
prisoner of war confined at Liverpool in the
year 1799, and the account of his appetite
was sent to Dr. Gilbert Blane by Dr. J.
Johnston, Commissioner, at that time, of sick
and wounded seamen. At the age of thirteen,
while hungering in a besieged town, Domerz
began to feel the pangs of morbid appetite,
and he crossed over to the enemy for the sake
of food. His craving for food soon became
wolfish; cooked meat of any kind his stomach
rejected, but raw meat of all kinds he omitted
no opportunity of seizing. In one year it
was said that he had seized and picked the
bones, after no other preparation than a rapid
skinning, of one hundred and seventy-four
cats, and dogs, and rats, as he could find them,
in addition to his rations. He was allowed
double rations in the army, and fed beyond
that, to him very insufficient allowance, by
the contributions of his comrades. When
his craving could not otherwise be stilled,
he would eat grass, but for all vegetable
food he had but little liking. During the
action in which he was taken prisoner, a
man's leg was amputated or shot off on board
his ship; he was found gnawing it, and
torn from it like a hyæna from his prey.
In the prison hospital the miserable man's
craving extended to the taking of doses of
medicines for patients who desired to cheat
the doctor.

In the prison an experiment was tried
upon the power of his appetite. After
breakfasting at four in the morning— his
stomach would not let him rest at night
without a meal— after breakfasting upon four
pounds of raw udder, he was supplied with
food during the day, under the inspection of
Dr. Johnston, Admiral Child and his son,
Mr. Forster, agent for prisons, and other
gentlemen. He ate ten pounds of raw beef
and two pounds of candles, drinking five
bottles of porter. The candles twelve to
the pound were taken with the meat, and
used to lubricate his throat when it became
dry, the tallow of each being taken in three
mouthfuls, and the wick sent after, rolled up
as a pill. This man had eaten the prison cat
and about twenty rats, that he found in his
cell.

Now, it is my opinion, that a man like this,
dining in public on the stage of Drury Lane,
would draw much better than a mere
tragedian, who chews unsubstantial words
instead of wholesome beef. Domerz was not
particularly stout, though a tall man of six
feet three.

For the stout man, who should represent
the heavy father of my company, I
would have somebody like Daniel Lambert.
Lambert's name is known better than his
history, and the lives of great men should not
be forgotten. He was born at Leicester in
1770. His immediate ancestors in the paternal
line had been a huntsman and a
cockfighter. His father became a prison-keeper,
and retiring from office, was succeeded by the
son. Daniel was then a strong young man.
given to game sports, who since the age of
nineteen, had promised to be heavy. A year
after his appointment as a keeper in the
prison the great increase in his size
commenced, but he remained still active, was a
good swimmer, and through the buoyancy of
his fat could carry two men on his back across