Julia Magruder

“ You want me to explain why it is that I always refer to your pupil as 'poor Anton!' It is truly because I pity him,—you most bewitching of women! My own blessed ownership of you makes my heart gentle to the rest of men—even including lowly Tyrolean peasants, who are, by circumstances, quite removed from you. And I wondered if it were only the dear opal ring which he looked at so hungrily that day. Do not forget that it is far less beautiful than the hand which wears it. ”

“ She made a spirited and beautiful study of him on a small canvas, painting him full length, in his Tyrolean costume, with the black pointed hat, ornamented with its proud group of rare and perilously purchased little feathers, for Anton was a sportsman as well as an artist, and had won these trophies by his own skill and daring, and many was the votive offering, so procured, which he laid at his young teacher's feet. ”

“ Florence, comprehending both their wonder and the cause which had produced it, made a hasty explanation, and hurried Ethel away, helping her to gather up her belongings and to express her thanks.
Just as they were ready to go, the young girl, with a quick impulse, held outher little canvas to Anton, saying impulsively:
"I will give it to you. You can take it and study it carefully. It may teach you something. When you are a great painter you shall give me a picture of yours. And, remember, I shall expect you at the hotel to-morrow, to arrange for your first lesson." ”

“ Besides this, the picture, the key, and the white swan all interested me, and, as it was the first time that an outside interest had made any headway against the melancholy of my own thoughts, these objects, far from cheerful as they were in themselves, afforded a grateful diversion. ”

“ The hands held something in their shrunken fingers,—a white ribbon, with the date of her marriage and death upon it, her husband's name and her own , and these words, which, under the compelling eyes of the picture, I laboriously studied out:—
"I have been able to keep you near me, even in death. I have never been separated from you, or from what was you to me once. But when death shall come to me you will have no power over my body, and they will take me from you. ”

“ An old room, with its low rafters stained black with smoke, and a long earthenware stovepipe running through it and threatening the life of those who pass under it!—an old stove surrounded by—I will admit—the brightest bits of copper, and brass, and tin that any housewife could boast—and a squatty little table piled up with carrots, and onions, and cab bages! ”

“ The woman who had remained to help the master in his last sad ministrations to his dying and dead wife had gone away the day after the funeral, and had never been heard of since.
That funeral, in the quaint old church but a few paces from the house, had been, from the woman's account, a melancholy affair enough. Scarcely any one dared to come to it, so malignant had been this fever, and it was feared that the few men who were willing to act as pall-bearers would not be equal to the task ”

“ He is the finest painter in the whole valley, though he is angry if I say so, and sometimes he throws down his brush and will not paint again for months, because he says the pictures in his mind are beautiful, but that they are hideous when he puts them down. That is only his strange way, though, for his pictures are most beautiful, as you can see from the one on my house, and all the new head-marks in the churchyard are done by him, and some most beautiful andenken. ”

“ But the young peasant, very white and startled looking, stepped back.
"It is not true," he cried. "Who has told you that I am a painter? I am only a wretched dauber and cheat. I will never touch color or brush again."
Ethel looked at him with a fervent gentleness.
"You are wrong," she said. "You will go to your work again, with a love and earnestness such as you have never known. You think my little picture here is good, and so it is, because I have been taught the way to do a thing ”

“ Florence answered, "and I find that every generation has its own local artist, who makes it a profession to do these decorations, to paint the little wooden head -boards which serve as tombstones here, and also to paint the andenken which decorate the surrounding country. ”

“ The one member of the party who was a worker was, strange to say, the youngest of them all,—an American girl who had been studying art in Paris with great earnestness, and whose absorbing motive in coming here was to paint. ”

“ These peasants are the most amiable beings on earth. I have come to understand them very well. Go to work and do your picture, and I promise to make everything right when the family returns."
Urged by Florence, Ethel, who was really longing to make this picture, ran back to the little inn for her box and easel, and was soon at work, sketching in her picture rapidly, with an absorbed face, while Florence sat by her and watched its progress and prepared herself to explain things on the return of the family. ”

“ The shepherds here, who so often spend the nights with their flocks on the mountain sides, are frequently killed by them, and then, too, the inhabitants of this region are sometimes overwhelmed with torrents of mud, ejected by the mountains—not a very pretty thing to paint! But you will see dozens of these little andenken all about here, as they are always erected on the spot of the disaster, and always consist of a pictorial representation of it, and the passers-by are supposed to say a prayer for the repose of the victim's soul. ”

“ He must have embalmed or stuffed it himself, the old woman said, for he was known to have remarkable knowledge and skill in such strange arts, and had once had a great room filled with birds and beasts, which he had preserved by methods studied in foreign lands. ”