Bits of the beauty of all climes under all skies, dark or sunny.
Mountains, trees, valleys, forests, plains and prairies, palaces and
huts, ships, boats and balloons. The beauty and the sadness of every
season of the year, beautiful faces, inspired faces, humbly faces,
strikin' powerful means, and mean cowardly sly liniments looked out on
every side of us.
Picters illustratin' every phase of human life, in every corner of the
globe, from birth to death, from kingly prosperity and luxurious ease to
prisons and scaffolds, the throne, the hospital, the convent, the
pulpit, the monastery, the home, the battle-field, the mid-ocean, and
the sheltered way, and Heaven and Hell, and Life and Death.
Every seen and spot the human mind had ever conceived wuz here
depictered.
Every emotion man or woman ever felt, every inspiration that ever
possessed their soul, every joy and every grief that ever lifted or
bowed down their heads wuz here depictered.
And seens from the literature of every land wuz illustrated, the world
of matter, the world of mind, all their secrets laid bare to the eyes of
the admirin' nations.
It wuz a sight--a sight!
Gallery after gallery, room after room did we wander through till the
gorgeous colorin' seemed to dye our very thoughts and emotions, and I
looked at Josiah in a kinder mixed-up, lofty way, as if he wuz a ile
paintin' or a statute, and he looked at me almost as if he considered me
a chromo.
It wuz a time not to be forgot as long as memory sets up high on her
high throne.
Room after room, gallery after gallery, beauty dazzlin' us on every
side, and lameness and twinges of rumatiz a-harassin' us in our four
extremities.
Why, the sight seemed so endless and so immense, that some of the time
we felt like two needles in a haymow, a haymow made up of a vision of
loveliness, and the two little needles feelin' fairly tuckered out, and
blunted, and browbeat.
Why, we got so kinder bewildered and carried away, that some of the time
I couldn't tell whether the masterpiece I wuz a-devourin' with my eyes
come from Germany or Jonesville, from France or Shackville, from Holland
or from Zoar, up in the upper part of Lyme.
Of course amongst that endless display there wuz some picters that
struck such hard blows at the heart and fancy that you can't forgit 'em
if you wanted to, which most probable you don't.
And now, in thinkin' back on 'em, I can't sort 'em out and lay 'em down
where they belong and mark 'em 1, 2, 3, 4, and etcetry, as I'd ort to.
But I'm jest as likely to let my mind jump right from what I see at the
entrance to sunthin' that I see way to the latter end of the buildin',
and visa versa.
It kinder worries me. I love to even meditate and allegore with some
degree of order and system, but I can't here. I must allegore and
meditate on 'em jest as they come, and truly a-thinkin' on these
picters, I feel as Hosey Bigelow ust to say:
"I can't tell what's comin'--gall or honey."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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