October 1.
"All that's bright must fade."
This long, delightful summer is now over, and the time approaches for us to return to the din and whirl of city life.
Miss Worthington left us this morning to return to her beautiful Southern home, and Gabrielle, too, has gone back to the quiet of her convent school, guided by the Protestant Sisters of St. Mary.
Ida is busily counting, and packing away the dainty china and silver, suggestive of so many pleasant gatherings of friends that we have had this summer, and Minna has brought down from the store-room large chests to contain the heavy linen sheets with Aunt Mary's initials beautifully embroidered in scarlet.
The guest-room and the parlors commence to wear a dismantled look, for one by one the pretty trifles that ornamented them are being removed, and although many of the pictures still hang upon the walls, dear little Pickie's portrait stands in an unoccupied bedroom swathed in linen, and ready to journey to the city when we do, for Ida prizes it so highly that she will not box it up and send it by express, but intends to have one of the servants carry it under her supervision, lest some harm may befall it. I do not wonder that it is priceless to her; I also think it of inestimable value, for not only is it a portrait of the beautiful little cousin whom I never saw, but even one uninterested in Pickie would, I am sure, be attracted by it as a rare work of art. It is a full-length picture: the child holds in his hands a cluster of lilies—a fit emblem of his spotless purity, and his undraped limbs are perfectly moulded as those of an infant St. John. His hair, of the line that Titian and Tintoretto loved to paint, falls upon his shoulders like a shower of ruddy gold, and for depth of tone and richness of color the picture more resembles the work of one of the old Venetian Masters than a painting by modern hands.
Whilst in town the other day, I called in the Tenth Street Studio Buildings to ask Mr. Page when he could give a few days of his time to restoring Pickie's portrait, as it has been somewhat affected by the dampness during the years that it has stood in the house in the woods. Mr. Page gave me a very amusing account of the difficulty he experienced in obtaining sittings from Pickie.
"Young children," he said, "are always averse to having their portraits painted, and there is usually a struggle to induce them to submit to the confinement of posing for me; but in Master Pickie's case, the child was so full of life that I might almost as well have tried to obtain sittings from a butterfly as from him."
Pickie's rapid illness and sudden death occurred before the picture was completed, and although Mr. Page worked upon it for some time from memory and from daguerrotypes of the child, a few finishing touches remain to be added.
October 3.