“Oh, I know how to find out what’s worth while. You just pick out a most stupid and uninteresting little picture or statue, and then you look in your Baedeker and he tells you it’s the gem of the collection.”
“You’re hopeless!” declared her father. “I wash my hands of you, and you can do your sightseeing in your own way.”
But he well knew she was only jesting, and many a pleasant hour they spent among the art treasures in Paris, while Patty unconsciously absorbed a foundation of true principles of worth and beauty.
The statue of the Venus of Milo was her greatest delight. She never tired of standing in front of it to gaze up into the beautiful face.
“Isn’t it strange,” she said to her father, one day, “that the expression of that face should be so exquisite, so,—so,—well, so perfectly lovely that I can’t stop looking at it; and yet, all the photographs of it are so different. The photographs all make her have a supercilious, ill-natured air, while the real statue is anything but that.”
“I agree with you,” said Nan. “I’ve often noticed it. And the plaster casts, or the bronzes, are not a bit like the original.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Fairfield, “the plaster or bronze of reduced size can’t be expected to be exact portraits, but surely a photograph should give the expression of the original face. For, doubtless, the lady stands still when she has her picture taken.”
“But the pictures aren’t like her,” insisted Patty. “I’ve bought seventeen different photographs of her, including post-cards, and they’re not the leastest mite like that dear face.”
“Seventeen!” exclaimed Mr. Fairfield; “are you going to set up a shop in New York?”
“No, indeed, but I’ve been trying to get a satisfactory picture, and I can’t.”