your own pleasure, sir--let me entreat you to take another point of view.
Sit farther back, by that young lady, in whose face I have watched the
reflection of every changing scene; only oblige me by sitting there; and,
take my word for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spiritual life,
and the bedaubed canvas become an airy and changeable reflex of what it
purports to represent."

"I know better," retorts the critic, settling himself in his seat, with
sullen but self-complacent immovableness. "And, as for my own pleasure,
I shall best consult it by remaining precisely where I am."

The showman bows, and waves his hand; and, at the signal, as if time and
vicissitude had been awaiting his permission to move onward, the mimic
street becomes alive again.

Years have rolled over our scene, and converted the forest-track into a
dusty thoroughfare, which, being intersected with lanes and cross-paths,
may fairly be designated as the Main Street. On the ground-sites of many
of the log-built sheds, into which the first settlers crept for shelter,
houses of quaint architecture have now risen. These later edifices are
built, as you see, in one generally accordant style, though with such
subordinate variety as keeps the beholder's curiosity excited, and causes
each structure, like its owner's character, to produce its own peculiar
impression. Most of them have a huge chimney in the centre, with flues
so vast that it must have been easy for the witches to fly out of them as
they were wont to do, when bound on an aerial visit to the Black Man in
the forest. Around this great chimney the wooden house clusters itself,
in a whole community of gable-ends, each ascending into its own karate
peak; the second story, with its lattice-windows, projecting over the
first; and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the outside