their new park. But the worst of it is, you can't take home the
sentiment of these things."

"I thought it was the business of painters to send home the sentiment
of them in pictures," said Florida.

Ferris talked to her in this way because it was his way of talking; it
always surprised him a little that she entered into the spirit of it;
he was not quite sure that she did; he sometimes thought she waited
till she could seize upon a point to turn against him, and so give
herself the air of having comprehended the whole. He laughed: "Oh yes,
a poor little fragmentary, faded-out reproduction of their sentiment--
which is 'as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine,' when
compared with the real thing. Suppose I made a picture of this very
bit, ourselves in the foreground, looking at the garden over there
where that amusing Vandal of an owner has just had his statues painted
white: would our friends at home understand it? A whole history must be
left unexpressed. I could only hint at an entire situation. Of course,
people with a taste for olives would get the flavor; but even they
would wonder that I chose such an unsuggestive bit. Why, it is just the
most maddeningly suggestive thing to be found here! And if I may put it
modestly, for my share in it, I think we two young Americans looking on
at this supreme excess of the rococo, are the very essence of the
sentiment of the scene; but what would the honored connoisseurs--the
good folks who get themselves up on Ruskin and try so honestly hard to
have some little ideas about art--make of us? To be sure they might
justifiably praise the grace of your pose, if I were so lucky as to
catch it, and your way of putting your hand under the elbow of the arm
that holds your parasol,"--Florida seemed disdainfully to keep her
attitude, and the painter smiled,--"but they wouldn't know what it all