There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number,
now COULD anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's,
in the October number; who can look at that without being purer
and stronger and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture
in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that,
no, not for anything this world can give. But look back still
further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number;
if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared,
I would have got up and visited the artist.
I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that
I can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning.
I know them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know
every line and mark about them. Sometimes when company are present
I shuffle the portraits all up together, and then pick them out
one by one and call their names, without referring to the printing
on the bottom. I seldom make a mistake--never, when I am calm.
I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till
my aunt gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor.
But first one thing and then another interferes, and so the thing
is delayed. Once she said they would have more of the peculiar kind
of light they needed in the attic. The old simpleton! it is as dark
as a tomb up there.
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