But I sez, “Josiah Allen, while I am a livin’ woman, and a Methodist sister, you never will be sculped with nothin’ but a towel hung over one arm, not even a paper collar on, and,” sez I, “what should we think to go into a photograph gallery to home and see Sister Bobbett and Sister Gowdey portrayed with a little mosquiter nettin’ slung over one shoulder?” Sez I, “It would be the town’s talk and ort to be––you can call it high art, Miss Meechim, if you want to, but I shall always call it low art.”
Miss Meechim murmured sunthin’ about its bein’ genteel, and Josiah looked round and didn’t pay the attention to my earnest words that he ort to. I believe they did for a spell shet up them statters of Venus, but they had let ’em out agin when we wuz there. There wuz one statter of a woman with the top of her head and her arms off. Josiah said to me:
“The idee of puttin’ that poor cripple in here amongst decent lookin’ wimmen; if they pictured her at all they ought to pictured her as bein’ carried to a hosspital.”
Miss Meechim wuz nigh by and I see she had gone almost into spazzums of admiration over it, and on our family’s account, didn’t want to fall too low down in her estimation, so I wunk at him and whispered, “Josiah, that is the celebrated Sikey; it is the proper thing to fall into extacies of admiration and wonder when you see it.” And I as I say not wantin’ to demean myself any further before Miss Meechim, put up my two hands in an attitude of wonder, but which she could take for admiration if she wanted to, but I didn’t say it wuz.
But Josiah sez, “Catch me a praisin’ up a no armed female, one who has been scalped, too, in the bargain.”
I hope Miss Meechim didn’t hear him. She always praised just what wuz proper to praise, she always read in her guide book just what she ought to admire and then proceeded to admire it to once. As she boasted her mind wuz a eminently conservative and genteel mind.
As for me my mind and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and Robert Strong was some so.
Arvilly wuz more bent on disseminatin’ her books to help and instruct, and would have canvassed Michael Angelo himself for the “Twin Crimes,” turning her back onto his most wonderful creations. As for Josiah, a wild goat leapin’ through museums and picture galleries couldn’t have been 378 more scornful of contemporaneous judgment exceptin’ when he tried to be fashionable.
Dear little Tommy would wander round with his arms clasped behind him under his velvet jacket and wonner at things to himself, and I spoze Carabi walked up and down beside him though we couldn’t see him. Sometimes I felt kinder conscience smitten to think I couldn’t honestly admire what seemed to be the proper thing to, and then agin I kinder leaned up agin the memory of John Ruskin and how he liked in art what he did like, and not what it was fashionable to, and I felt comforted.