at 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 butts with the rifle, when the poor captain
only scored 18; give him twenty in fifty at billiards and beat him;
and draw tears from the professional Italian people by her exquisite
performance (of voice and violoncello) in the evening;--I say, if a
novelist would be popular with ladies--the great novel-readers of the
world--this is the sort of heroine who would carry him through half a
dozen editions. Suppose I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing? Confess,
now, miss, you would not have been displeased if I had told you that she
had a voice like Lablache, only ever so much lower.

My dear, you would like to be a heroine? You would like to travel in
triumphal caravans; to see your effigy placarded on city walls; to have
your levees attended