of making good short-cake; if they were bad, that would be a
different matter.

"Well, Charlie, now you have seen all those paintings and figures
you used to talk so much about, what do you think of them?--are
they really so handsome as you expected?" asked his sister.

"They are wonderful!" exclaimed Charlie, with animation; putting
down a short-cake he had just buttered. "Wonderful!--There is no
other word to describe them."

Mrs. Hubbard observed, that she had some notion of a painting,
from the minister's portrait in the parlour--Charlie took up his
short cake--she thought a person might have satisfaction in a
painting; such a picture as that portrait; but as for those stone
figures he used to wish to see, she could not understand what was
the beauty of such idol-like things.

"They are not at all like idols, mother; they are the most noble
conceptions of the human form."

How could they look human? He himself had told her they were made
out of marble; just such marble, she supposed, as was used for
tomb-stones.

"I only wish you could see some of the statues in Italy; the
Laocoon, Niobe, and others I have seen. I think you would feel
then what I felt--what I never can describe in words."

{"Laocoon" = A famous Greek statue, in the Vatican at Rome, of a