I, for one, would be glad to see appropriate paintings of scriptural subjects decorating the walls of our national capitol, and have often been on the verge of offering to do it at my own expense. A cheerful painting to adorn the walls back of the Speaker's desk, would be a study by some great artist, representing Sampson mashing the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. It would be historical and also symbolical; but principally symbolical. Then another painting might be executed representing Balaam's ass delivering a speech on the Indian question. It would take first rate, and when visitors from abroad made a flying trip to Washington during the summer, and missed seeing Wade Hampton, and felt disappointed, they could go and see Balaam's ass, and go home with their curiosity gratified. I have seen a very spirited painting somewhere; I think it was at the Louvre, or the Vatican, or Fort Collins, by either Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Eli Perkins, which represented Joseph presenting a portion of his ulster overcoat to Potiphar's wife, and lighting out for the Cairo and Palestine 11 o'clock train, with a great deal of earnestness. This would be a good painting to hang on the walls of the Capitol, dedicated to Ben Hill and some other Congressional soiled doves. Then there are some simpler subjects which might be worked up and hung in the Congressional nursery to please the children till the session closed for the day, and their miscellaneous dads came to carry them home. I could think of lots of nice subjects for a painter to paint, or a sculptor to sculp, if I were to give my attention to it# But I haven't the time. THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD. |Now there was a certain rich man in those days, who kept a large inn on the American plan. And the hegira from other lands over against Kabzul and Eder, and Breckinridge and Kinah, and Georgetown and Dimmonah, and Kedesh and Roaring Forks, and Hador and Ithnan, and the Gunnison country and Ziph, and Telem and Silver Cliff, Beoloth and Hadattah, and even beyond Hazar--Gadah and Buena Vista, was exceedingly simultaneous. And throughout the country roundabout was there never before an hegira that seemed to hegira with the same hegira with which this hegira did hegira. And behold the inn was overrun day by day with pilgrims who journeyed thither with shekels and scrip and pieces of silver. And the inn-keeper said unto himself, "Go to;" and he was very wroth, insomuch that he tore his beard and swore a large, dark-blue oath about the size of a man's hand. For behold the inn-keeper gat not the shekels, and he wist not why it was. Now, it was so that in the inn was one Keno-El-Pharo, the steward, and he stood behind the tablets wherein the pilgrims did write the names of themselves and their wives and their sons and their daughters.