These exceptions I loved: they grew dear as friends.
One day, at a quiet early hour, I found myself nearly alone in a certain gallery, wherein one particular picture of portentous size, set up in the best light, having a cordon of protection stretched before it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the accommodation of worshipping connoisseurs, who, having gazed themselves off their feet, might be fain to complete the business sitting: this picture, I say, seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection.
It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life.
I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude, suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone.

She was, indeed, extremely well fed: very much butcher's meat--to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and liquids--must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh.

She lay half-reclined on a couch: why, it would be difficult to say; broad daylight blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks; she could not plead a weak spine; she ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright.

She, had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa.

She ought likewise to have worn decent garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of abundance of material--seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery--she managed to make inefficient raiment.