Read "Fact'ry 'Ands" by Edward Dyson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
MISS Pilcher, who had been in "the profession" as a Fat Girl, had come down in the world. She used to weigh 24st. 41bs. ; now she weighed only 12 st. and a few immaterial ounces. As she was short of stature, she had no very reasonable grounds for complaint on the score of ungraceful attenuation; but Martha was now too lean for show purposes, and she had once been the mainstay and the pride of an exhibitor of malformed calves, accomplished pigs, and human freaks of various kinds.
"When I think o' what I was," said she to the sympathetic pasters around her (and as she spoke she picked out the flattering symbols on an imaginary four-sheet poster of many colors, with a proud fore-finger)-- "Miss Gloriana Brobding, the Mammoth Mermaid, Twenty-five Stone in her Bathing-dress; Admired by the Prince o' Wales'-'n' then think o' what I am, pastin' beastly bags fer Spats at a tizzy a dray-load, it fair gi's me the 'ump."