As we have had recently, among us, some half a dozen visitors, male and female, from the Celestial Empire, I am strongly tempted to turn from the dead, to the living.
I have repeatedly attended the morning levees of Miss PWAN YEKOO, who was exhibited with her serving-maid, LUM AKUM, Mr. SOO CHUNE, the musical professor, his son and daughter, MUN CHUNG and AMOON, and Mr. ALEET MONG, the interpreter. This was certainly a very interesting group; such as never before has been presented in this city, and will not be again, I presume, for many years.
Miss Yekoo is said to be seventeen, which appears to be her age. With the costume of the Chinese, which, in our eyes, is superlatively graceless, we have become sufficiently familiar, by the exhibition of the living males and the stuffed females, in our Chinese Museums. Of their music, we had an interesting specimen, a few years since. Being fortunately deaf, I can say nothing of the performances of Miss _Yekoo_ and Professor _Chune_. Their features and complexions are Chinese, of course, and cannot be better described than in the words of Sir John Barrow, as applicable to the race: "The narrow, elongated, half-closed eye; the linear and highly-arched eyebrow; the broad root of the nose; the projection of the upper jaw a little beyond the lower; the thin, straggling beard, and the body generally free from hair; a high, conical head, and triangular face: and these are the peculiar characteristics which obtained for them, in the _Systema Naturæ_ of Linnæus, a place among the varieties of the species, distinguished by the name of _homines monstrosi_."
Apart from these and other considerations, it was well for all, who had it in their power, to avail themselves of an opportunity, which is not likely to be presented again, for years, and examine, with their own eyes, those "_golden lilies_," for the production of which this little Chinese spinster, Miss _Pwan Yeekoo_ has been severely tortured, from her cradle. She is neither very large, nor very small, for a girl of seventeen, and her feet are precisely _two inches and a half_ in length. A small female foot, as it came from the hand of the great Creator, has ever been accounted a great beauty, since Eve was born. But, to the eyes of all beholders, on this side of the Yellow Sea, no more disgusting objects were ever presented, than the horribly contracted and crippled deformities, upon the ends of Miss Yekoo's little trotters.