elling faces.

Those were the halcyon days of the dime museum, and there was one at
Cincinnati. Its proprietor chanced to hear of the boy's gift for
modelling, and offered him employment as a modeller of wax figures. Of
course Powers accepted, for this was work after his own heart, and he
succeeded not only in producing some figures which resembled definite
human beings, but "breathed the breath of life into them" by means of
clock-work devices, which enabled them to move their heads and arms in a
manner sufficiently jerky, but at the same time astonishing to the
simple people who visited the museum to behold its wonders.

Emboldened by this success, the young genius produced an "Inferno," or
"Chamber of Horrors," which, when completed, was an immense success--too
immense, indeed, for it had to be closed because of the fearful
impression it made upon the ladies, who fainted in their escorts' arms
whenever they gazed upon its terrors. One is inclined to suspect that
the ladies might have withstood the horrors of the sight, but for a
desire to prove their extreme sensibility. Fainting was more fashionable
eighty years ago than it is to-day.

Powers soon developed from this work a talent for catching likenesses,
and, searching for a wider field, proceeded finally to Washington, where
he modelled busts in wax of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, John C.
Calhoun, John Marshall, and other celebrities of the period. From wax,
he naturally wished to graduate into marble, and in 1837, left America
for Italy, never to return. Greenough, then laboring away at his
Washington, assisted him in various ways; and Hawthorne met him in Italy
and was much impressed by him, as his "Italian Note-Book" shows.

In 1843, he completed the figure which was destined to make him famous,
the "Greek Slave." The statue was supposed to represent a maiden
captured by the Turks, "stripped and manacled and offered for sale in
the market place," and so had a sentimental appeal which went straight
to the heart of a sentimental people, and overcame any antagonism which
her nudity might have produced. It inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning
to a not very noteworthy sonnet, clergymen gave it certificates of
character, so to speak, and "it made a sensation wherever shown, and was
fondly believed to be the greatest work of sculpture known to history."
Let us say at once that it is an engaging and creditable piece of work,
and worthy, in the main, of the enthusi