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With the elephant it is very different. Every ounce of his weight goes to the help of man, and every inch of his stature to his service.

I have said above that giants are always popular, and as perhaps the observation may be contested in the nursery, I would here, in the chapter on gigantic animals, interpolate my defence. Once upon a time, and not so long ago either, two bulky Irishmen were walking in San Francisco, when they met a foreigner sauntering along the street. Now they both hated foreigners, so they proceeded to assault him, whereupon the stranger took his hands out of his pockets, and, catching hold of the two Irishmen, banged their bodies together until they were half dead. The foreigner's performance drew the attention of passers-by to him, and they noticed, what the Irishmen had not discovered until too late, that the stranger was a man of gigantic physical strength. They also remarked that but for the feat he had performed this Hercules might have gone to and fro unsuspected, for not only was his demeanor modest and unassuming, but his face wore a gentle and benevolent expression. He was, in fact, of the true giant breed, reduced in proportions to suit modern times, but having about him, nevertheless, all the thews and the inoffensive disposition of the original Blunderbore.

To explain my meaning further I need only refer to the history of that overgrown but otherwise estimable person whose lodgings were burglariously entered by a young person named Jack, who for no apparent reason — such was the laxity of the public morals in those days — climbed up, so we are asked to believe, the stalk of a leguminous vegetable of the bean kind, and, having