[Illustration:  “Be a fool if you want to.”]

And he hurried me along at almost a dog-trot, but I would stop to look at a “Spring Day in Bavaria,” and the “Fish Market in Amsterdam,” and the “Nun,” and some others, I would—­they wuz all beautiful in the extreme.

Wall, after we come back into the gallery agin, the first picter we went to see wuz “Christ Before Pilate,” by Mr. Muncaxey.

There He stood, the Man of Sorrows, with His tall figure full of patient dignity, and His face full of love, and pity, and anguish, all bent into a indescribable majesty and power.

His hands wuz bound, He stood there the centre of that sneering, murderous crowd of priests and pharisees.  On every side of Him He would meet a look of hate and savage exultation in His misery.

And He, like a lamb before the shearers, wuz dumb, bearing patiently the sins and sorrows of a world.

The fate of a universe looked out of His deep, sweet eyes.

He could bear it all—­the hate, all the ignominy, the cruel death drawin’ so near—­He could bear it all through love and pity—­the highest heights love ever went, and the deepest pity.

Only one face out of that jeerin’, evil crowd had a look of pity on’t, and that wuz the one woman in the throng, and she held a child in her arms.

Mebby Love had taught her the secret of Grief.

Anyway, she looked as if she pitied Him and would have loosed His bonds if she could.  It wuz a dretful impressive picter, one that touched the most sacred feelin’s of the beholder.

There wuz a great fuss made over Alma Tadema’s picter of “Crowning Bachus.”

But I didn’t approve on’t.

The girls’ figgers in it wuz very beautiful, with the wonderful floatin’ hair of red gold crowned with roses.

But I wanted to tell them girls that after they got Mr. Bachus all crowned, he’d turn on ’em, and jest as like as not pull out hull handfuls of that golden hair, and kick at ’em, and act.

Mr. Bachus is a villain of the deepest dye.  I felt jest like warnin’ ’em.

I like Miss Tadema’s picters enough sight better—­pretty little girls playin’ innocent games, and dreamin’ sweet fancies By the Fireside.

“The Flaggalants,” by Carl Marr, is a enormous big picter, but fearful to look at.

It made me feel real bad to see how them men wuz a-hurtin’ their own selves.  They hadn’t ort to.

Another picter by the same artist, called “A Summer Afternoon,” I liked as well agin; the soul of the pleasant summer-time looked out of that picter, and the faces of the wimmen and children in it.

The little one clingin’ to its mother’s hand and feedin’ the chickens looked cute enough to kiss.  She favored Babe a good deal in her looks.

“The Cemetery in Delmatia” and the “Market Scene in Cairo,” by Leopold Muller, struck hard blows onto my fancy.  And so did three by Madame Weisenger—­