him over from his
native country, San Domingo, when a boy; but the old man dying shortly
afterwards, the Propaganda undertook to complete the youth's education
with the same view. As, however, he chose to think that painting, not
preaching, was his calling, and as an attachment had sprung up between us,
and I preferred passing my life with him rather than with Santa Ursula and
her virgins, to whom my friends would have dedicated me, we determined to
take our own case into our own hands, married without asking permission,
and then, to support ourselves, I turned my attention to Taxidermy and he
to the Fine Arts. Thus we managed to subsist till Annetta was nine years
old, when I lost him." "And I," interposed Annetta, "gained a score of old
botany books, and these beautiful paintings; I wonder no one comes to
propose for me." "_E pazza quella ragazza!_" said the mother; and, to
judge by her appearance and attire alone, she might have been so. Her
descent sufficiently accounted for her woolly hair; but in addition to its
negro texture, it was unteazled and neglected, being mixed with bits of
feather and other extraneous elements. She was swathed from head to foot
in coarse soiled dimity; in one hand she was holding a half stuffed hawk,
in the other a sponge, dipped in some arsenical solution to preserve it.
Our eyes had never rested upon so wild, so plain, so apparently hopeless a
slattern; but these unpromising appearances were soon forgotten, and amply
made amends for by the intelligence of her remarks, and the sprightliness
of her conversation; and we know,

"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."

The _officina_ was a curious place, and worthy of its mistress. It was
something between a shambles, a museum, and a tanyard, and exhaled in
consequence the mixed effluvia of decomposing flesh, alcohol, tannin, and
the oil of petroleum. In one corner stood a large tawny dog, stuffed, and
fixed to a board, with a new pair of eyes in his head, and his mouth well
furnished with grinders. "_Era molto vecchio questo cane_," going up to
introduce him to our notice, and patting his back affectionately: "his
sockets have not had such eyes in them for many a day, nor his jaws such
teeth. I have strengthened his legs with wire, and restored the proper
curl to the tail; nothing further is now lacking but some tufts of hair to
cover these bare patches on his haunches, when his master w