all lovingly done with unthinkable labor.

And there were "Italian Flower-Sellers,"
damsels with careful hair, two figures together, one
blonde, the other as brunette as lampblack, the
blonde--in pink satin and blue slippers--leaning
against a pillar and smiling over the golden coins
for which she had exchanged her posies; the brunette
seated at her feet, weeping upon an unsold
bouquet. There were red-sashed "Fisher Lads"
wading with butterfly-nets on their shoulders;
there was a "Tying the Ribbon on Pussy's Neck";
there were portraits in oil and petrifactions in
crayon, as hard and tight as the purses of those
who had refused to accept them, leaving them
upon their maker's hands because the likeness had
failed.

After a time the old man got up, went to his
easel near a window, and, sighing again, began
patiently to work upon one of these failures--a
portrait, in oil, of a savage old lady, which he was
doing from a photograph. The expression of the
mouth and the shape of the nose had not pleased
her descendants and the beneficiaries under the
will, and it was upon the images of these features
that Roger labored. He leaned far forward, with
his face close to the canvas, holding his brushes
after the Spencerian fashion, working steadily
through the afternoon, and, when the light grew