Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. _A Dainty Trifle for my Lady Love_ THE STORY OF A PICTURE _By Douglass Sherley_ * * * * * John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, 1884. Copyrighted 1884, By Douglass Sherley. * * * * * "Near my bed, there, hangs a Picture jewels could not buy from me." * * * * * There was a colored crayon in a crowded shop-window. Other people passed it by, but a Youth of the Town, with Hope in his heart, leaned over the guard-rail and looked upon the beauty of that pictured face long and earnestly. It was the head of a pretty girl with dark hair and dark eyes. She was clad in a dainty white gown, loose-flowing and beautiful. In her left hand, slender and uplifted, a letter; in her right a pen, and beneath it a spotless page. She was seated within the shadow of a white marble chimney-piece richly carved with Cupids, fluttering, kneeling, supplicating; with arrows new, broken, and mended; with quivers full, depleted, and empty. The great, broad shelf above her pretty head was laden with rare and artistic treasures. A vase from India; a costly fan from China; a dark and mottled bit of color in an ancient frame of tarnished gold, done by some Flemish master of the long-ago. Beyond all this, a ground of shadowy green, pale, cool, and delicious. On the table, near the spotless page and the dear pen-clasping hand, a bunch of flowers; not a mass of ugly blooms, opulent and oppressive, but a few garden roses, old-fashioned and exceeding sweet, blushing to their utmost red, having found themselves so unexpectedly brought into the presence of this pretty girl. This, in outline, was the picture. The dealer had written on a slip of paper, in large, rude letters, _Her answer: Yes, or No._ It was a frameless crayon, thrust aside and somewhat overshadowed by a huge and garish thing in gaudy-flowered gilt, which easily caught and held the eye of the busy throng. The Youth passed on to his duty of the day with Hope in his heart. Light grew his heavy task, and the drudgery of his work was forgotten--he was haunted by the sight of that face in the Picture. The softness of the eye, the sweetness of the mouth, or something, made the Youth of the noisy Town believe her answer would surely be--Yes. Now the Youth and the Afternoon Shadows together came and feasted on the beauty of that Maiden's face. The Shadows, without booty, fled away into the night. But not so with the Youth. In triumph he brought it to the favored room of his own dear home; and always thereafter this Picture gleamed in beauty from out its chimney-piece setting of ebony and old cherry.