Her room, where I liked to come to play because it was so large and sunny, was furnished as simply as a Presbyterian parsonage: the waxed walnut furniture was of the Directory period, the large bed had a canopy of thick, red, cotton stuff and the walls were painted an ochre yellow; and upon them in gilt frames, slightly tarnished, were hung water colors representing vases of flowers. I very soon discovered that this room was furnished in a very simple and old-fashioned way, and I thought to myself that the good old grandmother who sang so constantly must be much poorer than my other grandmother, who was younger by twenty years, and who always dressed in black--which last matter seemed an elegant distinction to me. But to return to my drawings! I think that the pictures of those two ducks, occupying such different stations in life, were the first I ever drew. At the bottom of the picture called “The Happy Duck” I had drawn a tiny house, and near the duck himself there was a large, kind woman who was calling him to her so that she might give him food. “The Unhappy Duck,” on the other hand, was swimming about solitary and alone on a sort of hazy sea, which I had represented by drawing two or three straight lines, and in the distance one could see the outline of a gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at my own work; I was astonished to find in it those things that I had not put there; to discover in it those things which elsewhere had given me such a well remembered anguish. “Oh!” I said with exaltation to my young companion, who did not understand anything of what was going forward, “Oh!” I exclaimed with a voice full of emotion, “you may see it; I cannot bear to look at it!” I covered the picture with my hands, but nevertheless I peeped at it very often; and it was so vividly impressed upon my mind that I can still recall it as it appeared to me transfigured: a gleam of light lay upon the horizon of that sea so awkwardly represented, the heavens appeared to be filled with rain, and it seemed to be a dreary winter evening in which there was a fierce wind blowing.