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 three-penn'orths 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