Yet I protest it was but for a thing of nought--a fault of youth, and warmer blood--a calendary inadvertence I may call it--or rather a temporary obliviousness of the day of the week--timing my Saturnalia amiss.---- Streets of Barnet, infamous for civil broils, ye saw my shame!--did not your Red Rose rise again to dye my burning cheek? It was but for a pair of minutes, or so--yet I feel, I feel, that the gentry of the Delamores is extinguished for ever.---- Try to forget it, reader.---- (Signed) HENRY FRANCIS VERE HARRINGTON DELAMORE. THE GENTLE GIANTESS (1822) The widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female I ever had the pleasure of beholding. There may be her parallel upon the earth, but surely I never saw it. I take her to be lineally descended from the maid's aunt of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. She hath Atlantean shoulders; and, as she stoopeth in her gait--with as few offences to answer for in her own particular as any of Eve's daughters--her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadillos that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her waist--or what she is pleased to esteem as such--nearly up to her shoulders, from beneath which, that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh abroad, from getting up and riding.--But her presence infallibly commands a reverence. She is indeed, as the Americans would express it, something awful. Her person is a burthen to herself, no less than to the ground which bears her. To her mighty bone, she hath a pinguitude withal, which makes the depth of winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months of July and August, she usually renteth a cool cellar, where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday--some twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is pervious to the four winds. Two doors, in north and south direction, and two windows, fronting the rising and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal point, catch the contributory breezes. She loves to enjoy what she calls a quadruple draught. That must be a shrewd zephyr, that can escape her. I owe a painful face-ach, which oppresses me at this moment, to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at this receipt of coolness. Her fan in ordinary resembleth a banner spread, which she keepeth continually on the alert to detect the least breeze. She possesseth an active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with her person. No one delighteth more than herself in country exercises and pastimes. I have passed many an agreeable holiday with her in her favourite park at Woodstock. She performs her part in these delightful ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden chair. She setteth