these things will be
put up for you--a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far
the best piece of work, you may be sure your _own_ won't be taken for a
pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can
never change--it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished
whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the
old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear
now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look
as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered
dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini.
What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There
are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before
they begin, as they would a horse at the fair--ay, and look in your mouth
too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo
you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not
the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your
hand--that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger
on a book--that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine
what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter
leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This
will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do
with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say--too many do not
know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting,
I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will
be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the
painter's privilege--the foreground and background. If you have the common
fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If
your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade,
waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that
makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a
distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or
you will perhaps have your glove in your hand--a device adopted by some,
to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry.
And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a
marble table. This shows the sitter has