Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a difference
there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently done over the
glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give himself my very
twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that playful
deviation in my lines which in his becomes actual deformity!"

"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with a
contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread out
on a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and give
him my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure gold beaten thin
as a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego de
las Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessed
reign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. HIS gilding is one part
gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been
laid on him with a brush--A BRUSH!--pah! of course he will be as
black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as bright as
when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova burnt
its heretics, I shall shine on forever."

"They carve pear wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown, and
call it ME!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle.

"That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the
cups they paint to-day and christen after ME!" said a Carl Theodor
cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel.

"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping ME!"
interposed the princess in the pink shoes.

"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a