"Still, even knowing all this, we consent to be duped. Now I like the picture of the cabin, even while I regret it, and, _although I know better_, I accept it. "What is truth, anyway? That is what you hear said so often in Boston, where we are said to try to make pivots of it for the wheels of all our little hobbies. "'Do I like Boston?' _Like Boston? No. I adore it!_ Oh, yes! But yet, when I am there, I am a little rebel. And at each place I am quite honest, I assure you. You see, I have a grandmother at both places--here and there. Such dears, they are--adorable, both, and _so different_! "Yes, that is true. Papa's portrait, the one Mammy had in the cabin,--yes, we have it,--twice recovered from the river. My father offered a reward, and a man brought it out of the mud, a little way down the levee, and not seriously hurt. It is a funny little picture of papa at six, in a Highland costume, with his arm over a strange dog which belonged to the artist. He looks in the picture as if he were stuffed--the dog does; but papa denies that. I believe this same dog appeared in most of the portraits done by this man, in all of those of boys, at least. For the girls he supplied a cat, or occasionally a parrot. The bird _was_ stuffed, I believe. He did my stepmother at five, and she holds the cat. The portraits hang side by side now. If we could find him, and the parrot, he should paint me, and we would start a menagerie. "Oh, yes; going back to the subject, there are many little things which I remember, without a doubt, for I could never imagine them. For instance, I remember at least one of my baptisms--the last, I suppose. I know I was frightened because the minister shouted, and Mammy kept whispering to me that he wouldn't harm me; and then he suddenly threw water all over me and I bawled. No, I have no idea who he was; but it was out of doors, and there was a rooster in it someway. I suppose it was on the levee and the rooster came to see what was happening. "There is a picture which always reminds me of the time we lived behind the woodpiles, that called 'The Soldier's Dream,' in which a poor fellow, asleep on the battle-field, sees dimly, as in the sky, a meeting between himself and his family. "I am sure that while we sat on the levee and Mammy talked to me of papa's coming, I used to picture it all against the sunset sky. Just look at it now. Was anything ever more gorgeous and at the same time so tender? One could easily imagine almost any miracle's happening over there in the west. "Yes, I know the skies of Italy, and they're no better. They are bluer and pinker, perhaps, in a more paintable way; but when the sun sets across the Mississippi, especially when we have their dreamy cloud effects, it goes down with variation and splendor unmatched anywhere, I do believe. But," she added with a Frenchy shrug, "you know I am only a river child, and everything belonging to the old muddy stream is dear to me.