“Now, look here, Squire; let Copley, if he was alive, but he ain’t; and it’s a pity too, for it would have kinder happified the old man, to see his son in the House of Lords, wouldn’t it? Squire Copley, you know, was a Boston man; and a credit to our great nation too. P’raps Europe never has dittoed him since.
“Well, if he was above ground now, alive, and stirrin’, why take him and fetch him to an upper crust London party; and sais you, ‘Old Tenor,’ sais you, ‘paint all them silver plates, and silver dishes, and silver coverlids, and what nots; and then paint them lords with their stars, and them ladies’ (Lord if he would paint them with their garters, folks would buy the pictur, cause that’s nateral) ‘them ladies with their jewels, and their sarvants with their liveries, as large as life, and twice as nateral.’
“Well, he’d paint it, if you paid him for it, that’s a fact; for there is no better bait to fish for us Yankees arter all, than a dollar. That old boy never turned up his nose at a dollar, except when he thought he ought to get two. And if he painted it, it wouldn’t be bad, I tell you.
“‘Now,’ sais you, ‘you have done high life, do low life for me, and I will pay you well. I’ll come down hansum, and do the thing genteel, you may depend. Then,’ sais you, ‘put in for a back ground that noble, old Noah-like lookin’ wood, that’s as dark as comingo. Have you done?’ sais you.
“‘I guess so,’ sais he.
“‘Then put in a brook jist in front of it, runnin’ over stones, and foamin’ and a bubblin’ up like any thing.’
“‘It’s in,’ sais he.
“‘Then jab two forked sticks in the ground ten feet apart, this side of the brook,’ sais you, ‘and clap a pole across atween the forks. Is that down?’ sais you.
“‘Yes,’ sais he.
“‘Then,’ sais you, ‘hang a pot on that horizontal pole, make a clear little wood fire onderneath; paint two covered carts near it. Let an old hoss drink at the stream, and two donkeys make a feed off a patch of thistles. Have-you stuck that in?’