sweetly: "Did you ever hear what Agassiz said when a scheme was once
proposed to him by which he could make a great deal of money?"

"I don't know as I did," replied Barker.

"'But, gentlemen, _I've no time to make money_.'" Barker
received the anecdote in absolute silence, standing helplessly with
the photograph in his hand; and Sewell with a hasty sigh forbore to
make the application to the ordinary American ambition to be rich
that he had intended. "That's a photograph of the singer Nilsson,"
he said, cataloguing the other objects on the chimney-piece. "She
was a peasant, you know, a country girl in Norway. That's Grevy, the
President of the French Republic; his father was a peasant. Lincoln,
of course. Sforza, throwing his hoe into the oak," he said,
explaining the picture that had caught Barker's eye on the wall
above the mantel. "He was working in the field, when a band of
adventurers came by, and he tossed his hoe at the tree. If it fell
to the ground, he would keep on hoeing; if it caught in the branches
and hung there, he would follow the adventurers. It caught, and he
went with the soldiers and became Duke of Milan. I like to keep the
pictures of these great Originals about me," said Sewell, "because
in our time, when we refer so constantly to law, we are apt to
forget that God is creative as well as operative." He used these
phrases involuntarily; they slipped from his tongue because he was
in the habit of saying this about these pictures, and he made no
effort to adapt them to Barker's comprehension, because he could not
see that the idea would be of any use to him. He went on pointing
out the different objects in the quiet room, and he took down
several books from the shelves that covered the whole wall, and
showed them to Barker, who, however, made no effort to look at them