his black hat, and for a
companion-picture, the herds-boy of the mountains, fair, rosy, standing
out on a opaline snow-peak, with a glistening Edelweiss in his hand;
opposite these a large picture of Haag's, a camel in the desert, the Arab
wife and baby in a fluttering mass of basket and fringe and shawl and
scarf, on his back; the Arab father walking a few steps in advance,
playing on musical pipes, his tasseled robe blowing back in the wind; on
one side of this a Venice front, and on another a crag of Norway pines;
here and there, small leaves of photographs from original drawings by the
old masters, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, and Luini; and everywhere, in all
possible and impossible places, flowers and vines. I never saw walls so
decorated. Yellow wall-flowers waved above the picture of the Norway
pines; great scarlet thistles branched out each side of the Venetian
palace; cool maiden-hair ferns seemed to be growing all around the glowing
crimson and yellow picture of the Arabs in the Desert. Afterward I learned
the secret of this beautiful effect; large, flat, wide-mouthed bottles,
filled with water, were hung on the backs of the picture frames, and in
these the vines and flowers were growing; only a worshipper of flowers
would have devised this simple method of at once enshrining them, and
adorning the pictures.

In one of the windows stood a superbly-carved gilt table, oblong, and with
curiously-twisted legs which bent inward and met a small central shelf
half-way between the top and the floor, then spread out again into four
strange claw-like vases, which bore each two golden lilies standing
upright. On this stood the most singular piece of wood-carving I ever saw.
It was of very light wood, almost yellow in tint; it looked like rough
vine trellises with vines clambering over them; its base was surrounded by
a thick bed of purple anemones; the smaller shelf below was also filled
with purple anemones, and each of the golden lilies held all the purple
anemones it could--not a shade of any other color but the purple and
gold--and rising above them the odd vine trellises in the pale yellow
wood. As I stood looking at this in mute wonder and delight, but sorely
perplexed to make out the design of the carving, I heard a step behind me.
I turned and saw, not my new friend, as I had expected, but her husband. I
thought, in that first instant, I had never seen a manlier face and form,
and I think so to-day. Robert Maynard