or in case of fire. Raphael's face was found
boldly executed on the underside of the moulding board, and Bacchus on
the head of a beer barrel. A chanting cherub adorned the cover of the
sugar bucket, and attempts to portray Romeo and Juliet supplied
kindling for some time.

From fire to oil was a natural transition for burned fingers, and Amy
fell to painting with undiminished ardor. An artist friend fitted her
out with his castoff palettes, brushes, and colors, and she daubed
away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on
land or sea. Her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken
prizes at an agricultural fair, and the perilous pitching of her
vessels would have produced seasickness in the most nautical observer,
if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging
had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance. Swarthy boys
and dark-eyed Madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio,
suggested Murillo; oily brown shadows of faces with a lurid streak in
the wrong place, meant Rembrandt; buxom ladies and dropiscal infants,
Rubens; and Turner appeared in tempests of blue thunder, orange
lightning, brown rain, and purple clouds, with a tomato-colored splash
in the middle, which might be the sun or a bouy, a sailor's shirt or a
king's robe, as the spectator pleased.

Charcoal portraits came next, and the entire family hung in a row,
looking as wild and crocky as if just evoked from a coalbin. Softened
into crayon sketches, they did better, for the likenesses were good,
and Amy's hair, Jo's nose, Meg's mouth, and Laurie's eyes were
pronounced 'wonderfully fine'. A return to clay and plaster followed,
and ghostly casts of her acquaintances haunted corners of the house, or
tumbled off closet shelves onto people's heads. Children were enticed
in as models, till their incoherent accounts of her mysterious doings
caused Miss Amy to be regarded in the light of a young ogress. Her
efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an
untoward accident, which quenched her ardor. Other models failing her
for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family
were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running
to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed
with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened
with unexpected rapidity. With much difficulty and some dange