“Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting her dairy, and Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left poor Ned all to himself in the garden, lonely and disconsolate, and I am torn from my books, and Sophie from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a nine-months-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub! What simpletons we are!”
Thus Miss Annie, the proude ladye of the family; handsome, haughty, with perilous proclivities toward grand socialistic theories, transcendentalism, and general strong-mindedness; pledged by many a saucy vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to studies artistic, æsthetic, philosophic, and ethical; a student of Plato, an absorber of Emerson, an exalter of her sex, a contemner of its natural enemies.
“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, aunt of the baby on the other side, and “Cousin Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close by the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal baptism from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood,—“simpletons, indeed! Did I not once see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the ‘Crouching Venus?’
“And this is a sight a thousand times more beautiful; for here we have color, action, life, and such grace as the divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to entrance in marble. Just look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple holding a tiny, sparkling drop,—these rosy, plashing feet and hands,—this laughing, roguish face,—these eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes of fairy land,—these ears, like dainty sea shells,—these locks of gold, dripping diamonds,—and tell me what cherub of Titian, what Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely? I say, too, that Raphael himself would have jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she sits there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened dignity of young maternity—of painting her as Madonna.”
CANDACE’S OPINIONS.
By Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Mrs. Stowe is particularly happy in portraying negro character. It requires for this a great appreciation of humor, and her writings abound in this, while her imagination and fine command of language make many of her writings brilliant and even poetical.
Mrs. Stowe is the most celebrated American authoress. Her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has been more widely read than any other work of fiction ever published. While in this work her conspicuous genius appears to fine advantage, she has nevertheless written other works, some of them describing New England life and character, which are masterpieces. She was born at Litchfield, Conn., on the 14th of June, 1812, and died at Hartford July 1st, 1896.