ouvre _is_, you
see, and it's got to be done. If we spent our whole time in this city in
mere pleasure and amusement, you would be the first to reproach
yourself, Augusta."

A few minutes later, when we had crossed the stone quadrangle and
mounted the stairs, and stood with our catalogue in the Salle Lacaze,
momma said that she wouldn't have missed it for anything. She sank
ecstatic upon a bench, and gave to every individual picture upon the
opposite wall the tribute of her intensest admiration. It was a pleasure
to see her enjoying herself so much; and poppa and I vainly tried to
keep up to her with the catalogue.

"Oh, why haven't we such things in Chicago!" she exclaimed, at which the
Senator checked her mildly.

"It's a mere question of time," said he. "It isn't reasonable to expect
Pre-Raphaelites in a new country. But give us three or four hundred
years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse
the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages." Poppa is
such an optimist about Chicago.

The Senator went on in a strain of criticism of the pictures perfectly
moderate and kindly--nothing he wouldn't have said to the artists
themselves--until momma interrupted him. "Don't you think we might be
silent for a time, Alexander," she said.

Momma does call him Alexander sometimes. I didn't like to mention it
before, but it can't be concealed for ever. She says it's because Joshua
always costs her an effort, and every woman ought to have the right to
name her own husband.

"Let us offer to all this genius," she continued, indicating it, "the
tribute of sealing our lips."

The Senator will always oblige. "Mine are sealed, Augusta," he replied,
and so we sat in silence for the next ten minutes. But I could see by
his expression, in connection with the angle at which his hat was
tipped, that he was comparing the productions before him with the future
old masters of Chicago, and wishing it were possible to live long enough
to back Chicago.

"How they do sink in!" said momma at last. "How they sink into the
soul!"

"They do," replied the Senator. "I don't deny it. But I see by the
catalogue, counting Salles and Salons and all, there's seventeen rooms
full of them. If they're all to sink in, for my part I'll have to
enlarge the premises. And we've been here three-quarters of an hour
already, and life is short, Augusta."

So we moved on where the imperishable faces of Greuze and Velasqu