“Convulsed with Grief,” was a beautiful picture but fur too affectin’ for my comfort. It was a bier all covered with flowers, and a dead child lyin’ on it with a veil thrown over its face, but painted in such a way that the beautiful white face was plain to be seen under it; and the mother was settin’ by it with grief, and agony, all painted out on her face. And as I looked on her, the tears jest started on a run down my cheeks, for though I well knew it was one of the sweetest and holiest things in life to become the mother of a baby angel, still I knew it was one of the saddest things too. I knew that mother heart where the pretty head had lain, was as empty and lonesome as a bird’s nest in winter; and the shadder of the little low grave would be high enough to cast its blackness and gloom over the hull earth. I felt for that mother so that I come pretty near cryin’ out loud. But I didn’t; I took out my white cotton handkerchief and wiped both of my eyes, and composed myself down.
And then feelin’ a little tired I seated myself on a bench in the middle of the room, Josiah sayin’ that he wanted to look at the Alps, and one or two convents, and a “Bull Dog.” But I watched him out of one corner of my speck, and I see that he never went nigh ’em, but kep’ a lookin’ at a “Centeur carryin’ off a Nymph” and a “Siesta of a Oriental Woman” and a “Nun’s Revery,” and a “Smilin’ Girl,” and some sirens, and other females. But I didn’t care; I haint got a jealous hair in the hull of my foretop, or back hair; and I well know the state of my pardner’s morals,—brass is no sounder. And I couldn’t help takin’ it as a compliment, and feelin’ flattered in behalf of my sect, to see all through the Sentinal, how sot men did seem to be a lookin’ at the pictures and statutes of wimmen. They looked at ’em as much again as they did at the figgers of their own sect; and it showed plain to me, that though they do some on ’em seem to feel rather hauty and proud-spirited towards us, they do think a sight on us—as a race.
So there I sot bounded by beauty on every side of me, and happy as a queen, when a likely lookin’ woman come in and sot down by me. Says she, “I have jest been a lookin’ at the Gobelin tapistry.”