"If I pose for a half day of each week like this in an atelier des dames, I earn twenty-five francs a week, but what I earn by posing for artists in private studios depends much upon chance. Sometimes I am needed only for a leg or arm or bust, or even hand: then I earn less of course, for it makes broken hours. I would demand much more from the ateliers des dames had I a handsome face, but always my ensemble is painted with the head of a prettier model where there is any purpose of using me in a picture."
"Do you become often as fatigued as you are now?" continued Paletta.
"Often more so. I have posed for nearly an hour upon one foot with extended arms in a dance of bacchantes, till I have fainted. Oftentimes I am kept in a running position upon one foot, with the other far behind me, in Atalanta's race; sometimes suspended by cords from the ceiling, with arms and legs in horribly uncomfortable positions, till everything seems to spin before me."
"Do you dislike to pose for male artists?" asked Paletta.
"Dislike? Why should I with so fine a figure as this?" answered the woman, throwing off her cloak to resume her pose. "I'd like it better if I had a handsome face, but I'd like it much worse if I had flabby flesh or buniony feet."
Paletta saw that no question of modesty entered the model's mind, and she went back to her easel to paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness of the artist's model.
Margaret B. Wright.
"AUF DEM HEIMWEG."
Thy light streams far, thou gladdening star,
O'er vale and forest, tower and town:
From land and sea men look to thee,
In every clime, as night comes down.
But ah! were all the eyes that mark
Thy rising, closed in endless dark,
Undimmed would glitter still
Thy bright unpitying spark!
I heed thee not. In yonder cot,
As home I haste, from toil set free,
Through dusk and damp the casement-lamp
Shines clear across the fields for me.
Dear light! dear heart! how well I know,
If bitter Death should lay me low,
Dark would that casement be,
And quenched your winsome glow!