Daily American Organ

From the Phrenological Magazine.

The Life of a Giantess.

Miss Sylvia Hardy, the lady now being exhibited at Barnum's American Museum as the "Maine Giantess," is a woman of peculiar and remarkable characteristics. In birth and descent, she is thoroughly American. She was born in 1825, in the village of Wilton, Franklin county, State of Maine. Her father, who died at thirty-six, and before she was six years old, was born in the same village. Her mother, who still lives, and is now fifty-seven, was born in Falmouth, Maine. Her grandmother was born in the same town. Her grandfather was born in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Miss Hardy was at birth one of the smallest of infants. Dr. Barker, of Wilton, who attended her mother at the time, used to remark that he had never seen anything, even of the twin kind, so diminutive. Her twin brother died at a very early age. Both together only weighed, we are assured, three and a half pounds.

Miss Hardy remained a child of very ordinary size until she was twelve years of age, when she suddenly took to growing with a rapidity that alarmed her friends and startled all her acquaintances. As she had five sisters, one of whom was older than herself, all of whom were rather below than above the common stature of the sex, her growth was the more surprising.

At thirteen, Miss Hardy was tall. At fourteen, she was a novelty. At fifteen, she was a wonder. She increased in this extraordinary manner until she attained her twenty-first year, when she remained stationary for about four years. During this period of rapid growth, it was impossible to make her clothing fit her with anything like common accuracy. She seemed to alter each day. She probably altered each week. The dress that became her one month was therefore useless the next; and thus, for nine years, it was necessary to make all her apparel with superfluous tucks and folds, in order to accommodate them to her condition.

One effect of this elongating process was, of course, constant ill health. She was excessively thin, and could not, under the circumstances, become any stouter. She was so weak as to be almost unable to stand. Her bones could not strengthen in substance sufficiently fast for their continued expansion, and so grew painfully brittle. In attempting to walk, therefore, one day, she fell to the ground and fractured a leg seriously. Nature, however, in the celerity of her physical developments, soon remedied the evil, and thus the cause subsequently aided in the cure.

Miss Hardy is now about 30 years of age. She has grown about seven inches since she was twenty-one, and is nearly eight feet high at the present moment. She weighs three hundred and forty-six pounds, is massively proportioned, robust, matronly in her appearance, symmetrical in figure, but inclined to stoop. (as most tall people are.) habit acquired in her native village, where her gigantic height subjected her to a scrutiny on the part of strangers, most annoying to her bashful nature.

Her features are large. The expression of her face, if not handsome, is amiable; her disposition is mild and gentle to a pleasing degree. Her voice is somewhat coarse, but not unmusical. Her movements are easy and graceful, although, having never before left her village home, she is as yet unsophisticated in fashionable ways, and moves and acts with a timidity that a little more acquaintance with public life will readily remove.

The Rev. Wm. Badger, of Wilton, Dr. Barker, Dr. Peaslee, Columbus Gray, Esq., attorney at law, of the same place, indeed nearly all of the respectable portion of the population of Wilton and East Wilton, know Miss Hardy well, and speak of her moral character in terms of the highest regard.

She certainly is one of the most wonderful natural phenomena of the age.