he masterpiece I wuz a-devourin' with my eyes
come from Germany or Jonesville, from France or Shackville, from Holland
or from Zoar, up in the upper part of Lyme.

Of course amongst that endless display there wuz some picters that
struck such hard blows at the heart and fancy that you can't forgit 'em
if you wanted to, which most probable you don't.

And now, in thinkin' back on 'em, I can't sort 'em out and lay 'em down
where they belong and mark 'em 1, 2, 3, 4, and etcetry, as I'd ort to.

But I'm jest as likely to let my mind jump right from what I see at the
entrance to sunthin' that I see way to the latter end of the buildin',
and visa versa.

It kinder worries me. I love to even meditate and allegore with some
degree of order and system, but I can't here. I must allegore and
meditate on 'em jest as they come, and truly a-thinkin' on these
picters, I feel as Hosey Bigelow ust to say:

"I can't tell what's comin'--gall or honey."

But some of them picters and statutes made perfect dents in my memory,
and can't be smoothed out agin nohow.

There wuz one little figger jest at the entrance where we went in, "The
Young Acrobat," that impressed me dretfully.

It wuz a man's hand and arm that wuz a-risin' up out of a pedestal, and
on the hand wuz set the cutest little baby you ever see. I guess it wuz
the first time that he'd ever sot up anywhere out of the cradle or his
ma's arms.

He looked some skairt, and some proud, and too cunnin' for anything, as
I hearn remarked by a few hundred female wimmen that day.

And like as not it is jest like my incoherence in revery that from that
little baby my mind would spring right on to the French exhibit to that
noble statute of Jennie D. Ark, kneelin' there with her clasped hands
and her eyes lifted as if she wuz a-sayin': "I _did_ hear the voices!"

And so she did hear the language of Heaven, and the dull souls around
her wuz too earthly to comprehend the divine harmonies, and so they
burnt her up for it.

Lots of folks are burnt up in different fires to-day, for the same
thing.

Then mebby my mind will jest jump to the "Age of Iron" or to the
"Secrets of the Tomb," or "The Eagle and the Vulture," or "Washington
and Lafayette," or "Charity"--a good-lookin' creeter she wuz--she could
think of other children besides her own; or mebby it will jump right
over onto the "Indian Buffalo Hunt"--a horse a-rarin' right up to git
rid of a buffalo that wuz a-pressin' right in