Such dogs and cats, such horses and cows, such houses and trees, such men and women, were never seen since the world began, as those which figured on his slate.  And yet he thought a great deal of his pictures.  How happy it used to make him, when some of the boys in the neighborhood, perhaps purely out of sport, would say, “Come, Ralph, let’s see you make a horse now.”  With what zeal he used to set himself about the task of making a horse.  When it was done, and ready for exhibition, though it was a perfect scare-crow of a thing, he used to hold it up, with ever so much pride expressed in the rough features of his face, as if it were an effort worthy of being hung up in the Academy of Design, or the Gallery of Fine Arts.

This state of things lasted for some years.  But Ralph did not make much progress in the art.  His horses continued to be the same stiff, awkward things that they were at first.  So did his cows, and oxen, and dogs, and cats, and men.  It became pretty evident, at least to everybody except the young artist himself, that he never would shine in his favorite profession.  He was not “cut out for it,” apparently, though it took a great while to beat the idea out of his head, that he was going to make one of the greatest painters in the country.  When he became a young man, however, he had sense enough to choose the carpenter’s trade, instead of the painter’s art.  I think he showed a great deal more judgment than many other people do, who imagine they are destined to astonish two or three continents with their wonderful productions in some department of the fine arts, but who, unfortunately, are not much better fitted for either of them than a goose or a sheep.

V.

PUTTING ON AIRS: 

OR, HOW I TRIED TO WIN RESPECT.

Reader—­young reader, for I take it for granted you are young, though if you should not happen to be, it does not matter—­I have about three quarters of a mind to let you know what I think of the practice of putting on airs.  The best way to do the thing perhaps, will be in the form of a story, and a story it shall be—­a story about a friend of mine who is sometimes called Aunt Kate, and who has been known to call herself by that name.

It is true that some of the incidents in this story are not much to my friend’s credit.  But I am sure she cannot blame me for mentioning them to you; for she gave me the whole story, and I shall tell it almost exactly in her own words.  Are you ready for it?  Well, then, here it is: 

Reader, have you ever been from home?  Of course you have.  Everybody goes from home in these days; but in the days of my childhood such an event was not a matter of course affair, as it now is.  Most people stayed at home then, more then they do now—­the very aged, and the very young, especially.

When I was a child, my parents sometimes took me with them, when they went to visit their city friends.  These journeys used to excite the envy of all my young companions, none of whom, if I recollect right, had ever been to a city.  But times have changed even in my native village; and the juvenile portion of its inhabitants begin their travels much earlier in life now, than they did then.