erable volumes looked affectionately at me. They knew
me of old, and had told me their delightful secrets. "They had slept
in my bosom, and whispered kind things to me in the dark night." Some
pressed forward, declaring that here was the new wine of thought,
sparkling and foaming as it had never done before, from the depths of
human sympathy; and others murmured, "The old is better," and smiled at
the surface-thoughts in blue and gold. Volumes and authors grew angry
and vituperative. There was so much to be said on all sides, that I was
deafened, and, with a shake of my head, shook everything into chaos, as
I had done a hundred times before.

"What are you thinking of, Del?" said Laura, pointing the dog's eye with
scarlet wool, to make him look fierce. "You have been looking straight
at me for half a minute."

"Half a minute! have I?"

That wasn't long, however, considering what I had seen in the time.

"At Cotton's, yesterday, I saw, Laura, a beautiful engraving of Arria
and Paetus. She is drawing the dagger from her side, and saying, so
calmly, so heroically,--'My Paetus! it is not hard to die!'"

I had inquired the price of this engraving, and the man said it was
fifty dollars without the frame.

"Those pictures are so painful to look at! don't you think so, Del? And
the better they are, the worse they are! Don't you remember that day we
passed with Sarah, how we wondered she could have her walls covered with
such pictures?"

"Merrill brought them home from Italy, or she wouldn't, perhaps. But I
do remember,--they ware very disagreeable. That flaying of Marsyas! and
Christ crowned with thorns! and that sad Ecce Homo!"

"Yes,--and the Laocooen on that centre bracket! enough to make you scream
to look at it! I desire never to have such bloody reminders about me;
and for a parlor or sitting-room I would infinitely prefer a dead wall
to such a picture, if it were by the oldest of the old masters. Who
wants Ugolino in the house, if it is ever so well painted? Supping on
horrors indeed!"

We rocked again,--and Laura talked about plants and shirts and such
healthy subjects. But, of course, my mind was in such a condition,
nothing but fifty-dollar subjects would stay in it; and, most of all, I
must not let Laura guess what I was thinking of.

"Do you like enamelled watches, Laura,--those pretty little ones made in
Geneva, I mean, worth from forty to sixty dollars?"

"How do you mean? Do I like the small timepiec