under its forelegs.

I don't see how that hunter could stay on his back--I couldn't--to say
nothin' to shootin' the arrows into the critter as he's a-doin'.

Or mebby my mind'll jump right over to the "Soldier of Marathon," or
"Eve," no knowin' at all where my thoughts will take me amongst them
noble marble figgers.

And as for picters, my revery on 'em now is a perfect sight; a show as
good as a panorama is a-goin' on in my fore-top now when I let my
thoughts take their full swing on them picters.

Amongst them that struck the hardest blows on my fancy wuz them that
told stories that touched the heart.

There wuz one in the Holland exhibit, called "Alone in the World," a
picter that rousted up my feelin's to a almost alarmin' extent. It wuz a
picter by Josef Israel.

It wuz a sight to see how this picter touched the hearts of the people.
No grandeur about it, but it held the soul of things--pathos,
heart-breakin' sorrow.

A peasant had come home to his bare-lookin' cottage, and found his wife
dead in her bed.

He didn't rave round and act, and strike an attitude. No, he jest turned
round and sot there on his hard stool, with his hands on his knees,
a-facin' the bare future.

The hull of the desolation of that long life of emptiness and grief that
he sees stretch out before him without her, that he had loved and lost,
wuz in the man's grief-stricken face.

It wuz that face that made up the loss and the strength of the picter.

I cried and wept in front of it, and cried and wept. I thought what if
that wuz Josiah that sot there with that agony in his face, and that
desolation in his heart, and I couldn't comfort him--

Couldn't say to him: "Josiah, we'll bear it together."

I wuz fearful overcome.

[Illustration: I cried and wept in front of it, and cried and
wept.]

And then there wuz another picter called "Breakin' Home Ties."

A crowd always stood before that.

It wuz a boy jest a-settin' out to seek his fortune. The breakfast-table
still stood in the room. The old grandma a-settin' there still; time had
dulled her vision for lookin' forward. She wuz a-lookin' into the past,
into the realm that had held so many partin's for her, and mebby
lookin' way over the present into the land of meetin's.

The little girl with her hand on the old dog is too small to fully
realize what it all means.

But in the mother's face you can see the full meanin' of the
partin'--the breakin' of the old ties that bo