John went in and inquired.  It was by an unknown French artist, without name or patrons, who had just come to our shores to study our scenery, and this was the first picture he had exposed for sale.  John had just been paid a quarter’s salary; he bethought him of board-bill and washerwoman, sighed, and faintly offered fifty dollars.

To his surprise he was taken up at once, and the picture became his.  John thought himself dreaming.  He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a trained hand and a true artist-soul.  So he found his way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much less than its worth.  “It was all I could give, though,” he said; “and one who paid four times as much could not value it more.”  And so John took one and another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas the traits of American scenery as appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,—­our rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes.  Whoso would know the truth of the same, let him inquire for the modest studio of Morvillier, at Malden, scarce a bow-shot from our Boston.

This picture had always been the ruling star of John’s house, his main dependence for brightening up his bachelor-apartments; and when he came to the task of furbishing those same rooms for a fair occupant, the picture was still his mine of gold.  For a picture, painted by a real artist, who studies Nature minutely and conscientiously, has something of the charm of the good Mother herself,—­something of her faculty of putting on different aspects under different lights.  John and his wife had studied their picture at all hours of the day:  they had seen how it looked when the morning sun came aslant the scarlet maples and made a golden shimmer over the blue mountains, how it looked toned down in the cool shadows of afternoon, and how it warmed up in the sunset, and died off mysteriously into the twilight; and now, when larger parlors were to be furnished, the picture was still the tower of strength, the rallying-point of their hopes.

“Do you know, John,” said the wife, hesitating, “I am really in doubt whether we shall not have to get at least a few new chairs and a sofa for our parlors?  They are putting in such splendid things at the other door that I am positively ashamed of ours; the fact is, they look almost disreputable,—­like a heap of rubbish.”

“Well,” said John, laughing, “I don’t suppose all together sent to an auction-room would bring us fifty dollars, and yet, such as they are, they answer the place of better things for us; and the fact is, Mary, the hard impassable barrier in the case is, that there really is no money to get any more.”