When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any other girl in the community.  For example, I once heard Silas Foster, in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round Priscilla’s neck, and chain her to a post, because she, with some other young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide off the cart.  How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla’s waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the oxen, to take her first lessons in riding.  She met with terrible mishaps in her efforts to milk a cow; she let the poultry into the garden; she generally spoilt whatever part of the dinner she took in charge; she broke crockery; she dropped our biggest pitcher into the well; and—­except with her needle and those little wooden instruments for purse-making—­was as unserviceable a member of society as any young lady in the land.  There was no other sort of efficiency about her.  Yet everybody was kind to Priscilla; everybody loved her and laughed at her to her face, and did not laugh behind her back; everybody would have given her half of his last crust, or the bigger share of his plum-cake.  These were pretty certain indications that we were all conscious of a pleasant weakness in the girl, and considered her not quite able to look after her own interests, or fight her battle with the world.

* * * * *

From “The Marble Faun.”

=_299._= SCULPTURE:  ART AND ARTISTS.

A sculptor, indeed, to meet the demands which our preconceptions make upon him, should be even more indispensably a poet than those who deal in measured verse and rhyme.  His material, or instrument, which serves him in the stead of shifting and transitory language, is a pure, white, undecaying substance.  It insures immortality to whatever is wrought in it, and therefore makes it a religious obligation to commit no idea to its mighty guardianship, save such as may repay the marble for its faithful care, its incorruptible fidelity, by warming it with an etherial life.  Under this aspect, marble assumes a sacred character; and no man should dare to touch it unless he feels within himself a certain consecration and a priesthood, the only evidence of which, for the public eye, will be the high treatment of heroic subjects, or the delicate evolution of spiritual, through material beauty....

No ideas such as the foregoing—­no misgivings suggested by them—­probably troubled the self complacency of most of these clever sculptors.  Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it....