But what’s the use of tryin’ to tell what pictures was the loveliest, amidst such acres and acres of loveliness, such sweet and nearly bewitchin’ faces, such lovely and almost glowin’ landscapes.
There was “Yankey Doodle” as interestin’ as I always knew that yankey was; I never see him look better than he did here; there stood three generations with the soul of 1776 a shinin’ through their faces, and the oldest face of all was lit up with the deepest glow and inspiration. It was a dretful animatin’ and inspirin’ picture to me and to Josiah. And then there was another picture called “Elaine” that dealt both my mind and my heart fearful blows. I had heerd Thomas J. read about her so much that she seemed almost like one of the relations on the side of the Smiths. She was a handsome girl, and likely as she could be, but she got disappointed, fell in love with Mr. Launcelot—and he, bein’ in love with another man’s wife, couldn’t take to her, so she died off. But her last request was to be laid, after she died, in a boat with a letter in her hand for him she died off for, biddin’ him good-bye; and that the boat—steered by her father’s dumb hired man—should float off down to Camelot where he was a stayin’ a visitin’. (I don’t s’pose I have told it in jest exactly the words, Thomas J. reads so much, but I have probable got the heads of the story right). And there she lay, perfectly lovely—in her right hand, the lily, and in her left the letter; the dead steered by the dumb, floatin’ down the still waters. It was exceedinly affectin’ to me, and I was jest a goin’ to take out my white cotton handkerchief to cry onto it, when all of a sudden I heerd behind me the voice of the Editor of the Auger a sayin’:
“It is a false perspective.”
“Yes,” says Cornelius Cork, in the same fault-findin’ tone: “it’s awful false, not a mite of truth in it.”
“A perfect lie,” says Shakespeare Bobbet.
“The tone is too low down,” says the Editor of the Auger again, in a complainin’ way.
“Low down again as it ort to be,” says old Bobbet.
I declare for’t, I jest locked arms with Josiah and hurried him off, and never stopped till we got clear into Austria. But on the way there, I says, “How mad it makes me, Josiah Allen, to see anybody find fault and sneer at things they can’t understand.”
“Well,” says Josiah mildly, “you know they have got a reputation to keep up, and they are bound to do it. Why, they say if anybody haint dressed up a mite, if you see ’em a lookin’ at handsome pictures, or statutes, or anything of that sort, with a cold and wooden look to their faces, and turning their noses up, and finding fault, you may know they are somebody.” “I s’pose” says Josiah, “the ‘Creation Searchers’ can’t be outdone in it; I s’pose they put on as hauty and superior-silly-ous looks as anybody ever did, that haint had no more practice than they have.”
Josiah will make a slip sometimes, and says I, “you mean super-silly, Josiah.”