Mr. Whistler must a been dretful interested himself in the Lady of the Land of Porcelain, or he couldn’t have interested other folks so.

And then there wuz another by Mr. Whistler, called “The Lady of the Yellow Buskin.”

A poem of glowin’ color and life.

And right there nigh by wuz one by Mr. Chase, jest about as good.  The name on’t wuz “Alice.”

I believe Alice Ben Bolt looked some like her when she wuz of the same age, you know—­

“Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown,
Who wept with delight when Mr. Ben Bolt gin her a smile;
And trembled with fear at Mr. Ben Boltses frown.”

She ort to had more gumption than that; but I always liked her.

Elihu Vedder’s picters rousted up deep emotions in my soul—­jest about the deepest I have got, and the most mysterious and weird.

Other artists may paint the outside of things, but he goes deeper, and paints the emotions of the soul that are so deep that you don’t hardly know yourself that you’ve got them of that variety.

In lookin’ through these picters of hisen illustratin’ that old Persian poem, “Omer Kyham”—­

Why, I have had from eighty to a hundred emotions right along for half a day at a time.

Mr. Vedder had here “A Soul in Bondage,” “The Young Marysus and Morning,” and “Delila and Sampson,” and several others remarkably impressive.

And Mr. Sargent’s “Mother and Child” looked first-rate in its cool, soft colors.  They put me in mind a good deal of Tirzah Ann and Babe.

And “The Delaware Valley” and “A Gray Lowery Day,” by Mr. George Inness, impressed me wonderfully.  Many a day like it have I passed through in Jonesville.

“Hard Times,” also in a American department, wuz dretful impressive.  A man and a woman wuz a-standin’ in the hard, dusty road.

His face looked as though all the despair, and care, and perplexities of the hard times wuz depictered in it.

He wuz stalkin’ along as if he had forgot everything but his trouble.

And I presoom that he’d had a dretful hard time on’t—­dretful.  He couldn’t git no work, mebby, and wuz obleeged to stand and see his family starve and suffer round him.

Yes, he wuz a-walkin’ along with his hands in his empty pockets and his eyes bent towards the ground.

But the woman, though her face looked haggard, and fur wanner than hissen, yet she wuz a-lookin’ back and reachin’ out her arms towards the children that wuz a-comin’ along fur back.  One of ’em wuz a-cryin’, I guess.  His ma hadn’t nothin’ but love to give him, but you could see that she wuz a-givin’ him that liberal.

And Durant’s “Spanish Singing Girl” rousted up a sight of admiration; she wuz very good-lookin’—­looked a good deal like my son’s wife.

Well, in the Russian Department (and jest see how my revery flops about, clear from America to Russia at one jump)—­