white figures melted and warmed into masses and alcoves, and innumerable volumes looked affectionately at me.  They knew me of old, and had told me their delightful secrets.  “They had slept in my bosom, and whispered kind things to me in the dark night.”  Some pressed forward, declaring that here was the new wine of thought, sparkling and foaming as it had never done before, from the depths of human sympathy; and others murmured, “The old is better,” and smiled at the surface-thoughts in blue and gold.  Volumes and authors grew angry and vituperative.  There was so much to be said on all sides, that I was deafened, and, with a shake of my head, shook everything into chaos, as I had done a hundred times before.

“What are you thinking of, Del?” said Laura, pointing the dog’s eye with scarlet wool, to make him look fierce.  “You have been looking straight at me for half a minute.”

“Half a minute! have I?”

That wasn’t long, however, considering what I had seen in the time.

“At Cotton’s, yesterday, I saw, Laura, a beautiful engraving of Arria and Paetus.  She is drawing the dagger from her side, and saying, so calmly, so heroically,—­’My Paetus! it is not hard to die!’”

I had inquired the price of this engraving, and the man said it was fifty dollars without the frame.

“Those pictures are so painful to look at! don’t you think so, Del?  And the better they are, the worse they are!  Don’t you remember that day we passed with Sarah, how we wondered she could have her walls covered with such pictures?”

“Merrill brought them home from Italy, or she wouldn’t, perhaps.  But I do remember,—­they ware very disagreeable.  That flaying of Marsyas! and Christ crowned with thorns! and that sad Ecce Homo!”

“Yes,—­and the Laocooen on that centre bracket! enough to make you scream to look at it!  I desire never to have such bloody reminders about me; and for a parlor or sitting-room I would infinitely prefer a dead wall to such a picture, if it were by the oldest of the old masters.  Who wants Ugolino in the house, if it is ever so well painted?  Supping on horrors indeed!”

We rocked again,—­and Laura talked about plants and shirts and such healthy subjects.  But, of course, my mind was in such a condition, nothing but fifty-dollar subjects would stay in it; and, most of all, I must not let Laura guess what I was thinking of.

“Do you like enamelled watches, Laura,—­those pretty little ones made in Geneva, I mean, worth from forty to sixty dollars?”

“How do you mean?  Do I like the small timepieces? or is it the picture on the back?” said Laura.

“Oh, either.  I was thinking of a beauty I saw at Crosby’s yesterday, with the Madonna della Seggiola on the back.  Now it is a good thing to have such a picture about one, any way.  I looked at this through the microscope.  It was surprisingly well done; and I suppose the watches are as good as most.”