Curiosities of Natural History Author:Francis Trevelyan Buckland Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chang's Graceful Manners. f5 the audience, with an ease and elegance that would send an ordinary dancing-master out of his mind. It was neither a lady's c... more »urtsey, nor yet the formal bow which we are sometimes obliged -to make when habited in that odious garment the evening swallow-tail or "claw-hammer" coat, but a mixture of both a bow and a curtsey, manly, without conceit, yet reverential and respectful to the audience. The giant immediately began a speech in Chinese, bowing and fanning himself during its delivery, and when he had finished his oration, one of the guardians of the stairs went to a table and read a translation of it, that we, the spectators, might know what we had been listening to. The poor Chinaman was very nervous, as it was evidently the first speech he had made in a foreign land, and to a crowded audience; but I learnt from Chang's printed autobiography, that his speech was to the following effect: -- " Rulers and people of the Western Countries, " My name is Chang ; I am nineteen summers old ; I am a native of Fychow, a city in the Au-hwy province of the celestial Chinese empire. The Changs, as far hack as the voice of the past speaks to me, have all been great (tall) men. My father, Chang Tzing, a scholar and disciple of Confucius; my grandfather, a sage, and famous for his wisdom; my great-grandfather,14 Chang's Speech. Chang, the man of war, of whose great deeds our poets love to sing, all were great men, of whom I am the least, the poor and humble representative. My elder brother, Chang Sou Gow, is a soldier in the Imperial army, at Foo-Chow-Foo. He is in height six inches under me ; but in width and strength and massiveness, I cannot compare with him. He weighs four hundred pounds; he is known as ' the strong man of the East,' the terr...« less