Project Gutenberg's From a Bench in Our Square, by Samuel Hopkins Adams

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Title: From a Bench in Our Square

Author: Samuel Hopkins Adams

Release Date: February 4, 2004 [EBook #10944]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM A BENCH IN OUR SQUARE ***

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FROM A BENCH IN OUR SQUARE

BY

Samuel Hopkins Adams

1922

_Contents_

_A Patroness of Art_

_The House of Silvery Voices_

_Home-Seekers' Goal_

_The Guardian of God's Acre_

_For Mayme, Read Mary_

_Barbran_

_Plooie of Our Square_

_Triumph_

FROM A BENCH IN OUR SQUARE

A PATRONESS OF ART

I

Peter (flourish-in-red) Quick (flourish-in-green) Banta (period-in-blue)
is the style whereby he is known to Our Square.

Summertimes he is a prop and ornament of Coney, that isle of the blest,
whose sands he models into gracious forms and noble sentiments, in
anticipation of the casual dime or the munificent quarter, wherewith, if
you have low, Philistine tastes or a kind heart, you have perhaps
aforetime rewarded him. In the off-season the thwarted passion of color
possesses him; and upon the flagstones before Thornsen's Elite
Restaurant, which constitutes his canvas, he will limn you a full-rigged
ship in two colors, a portrait of the heavyweight champion in three, or,
if financially encouraged, the Statue of Liberty in four. These be,
however, concessions to popular taste. His own predilection is for
chaste floral designs of a symbolic character borne out and expounded by
appropriate legends. Peter Quick Banta is a devotee of his art.

Giving full run to his loftier aspirations, he was engaged, one April
day, upon a carefully represented lilac with a butterfly about to light
on it, when he became cognizant of a ragged rogue of an urchin regarding
him with a grin. Peter Quick Banta misinterpreted this sign of interest.

"What d'ye think of _that_?" he said triumphantly, as he sketched in a
set of side-whiskers (presumably intended for antennae) upon the
butterfly.

"Rotten," was the prompt response.

"_What_!" said the astounded artist, risin