Chapter 38 - Page 2

mezzotints; also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:'
maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full of original 'poetry'
of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed;
two or three goody-goody works--'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'
etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's
'Lady's Book,' with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure
women with mouths all alike--lips and eyelids the same size--
each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking from
under her dress and letting-on to be half of her foot.
Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with
pipe passing through a board which closes up the discarded
good old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel,
over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits,
natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax,
and painted to resemble the originals--which they don't. Over
middle of mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the Delaware;
on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightning
crewels by one of the young ladies--work of art which would
have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could
have foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it.
Piano--kettle in disguise--with music, bound and unbound,
piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague;
Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn;
On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken;
She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met;
Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling;
Hours there were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence;
A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea;
and spread open on the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it,
RO-holl on, silver MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc.
Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar--guitar capable
of playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start.
Frantic work of art on the wall--pious motto, done on the premises,
sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses:
progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern commerce.
Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts,
conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies;
being grim black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly:
lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-geological trees
on shore, anthracite precipice; name of criminal conspicuous
in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.
Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull's
Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar.
Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the
Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the family in oil:
papa holding a book ('Constitution of