“Well, sah, I didn't want to go down thar without no price, so I called in to arst you what you might consider yo' fif' worth, an' five times ovah.” I did not laugh at Mammy. The emancipated negroes had such utterly wild notions of what was going to be done for them that Mammy's statement did not surprise me very much. I let her go with the assurance that I would inquire into the matter. She left enjoining me not to put that “fif' too cheap,” and I insisting that she should not go to the Bureau, in deference to whose officials her astonishing toilet had evidently been made. I was so much pleased with my own work that it was nearly twilight before the knock of a familiar friend roused me. He was a clever amateur, and took the greatest interest in my work. His enthusiasm over Mammy's effigy made me glow. He agreed to pose for me in Mammy's costume. Next day I borrowed the outfit without intimating that it was to be worn by anybody. Mammy was over-nervous about its being properly cared for. I think that she still contemplated appearing in it at the Bureau. In a week the picture was complete. My model and I went out and celebrated appropriately but frugally. A small label in the corner gave the title to the picture--“My old Mammy.” My friend gave my work a place in his window, and my acquaintances generally accorded unqualified praise. The older ones recognized Mammy at once. Pending a purchaser for this, I started my deferred subject, and changed it into a figure piece. A lovely friend was my model. She contemplated the flowers and letters. Above the old piece of furniture on which she leaned there hung a photograph, a sword, and a sash--a more striking suggestion of my first title, “Dead Hopes.” How little I dreamed, as I worked, that there was such happy irony in the name, and that Mammy could ever, in the remotest way, conduce to such a result! Nearly every morning I hovered about my friend's establishment at a sufficient distance to elude suspicion of my anxiety, but easily in visual range of my exhibit. One morning it was not visible. I rushed to the store with a throbbing breast. Alas! the picture had only been shifted to another light. Before the revulsion of feeling had time to overpower me I was seized by my friend the merchant. “It's a regular play,” he exclaimed. He forced me to a seat on a pile of cheese-boxes, and facing me, began: