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- am sure my own eyes must have magnified as I stared. When church was
out, I wanted my aunt to take me along and follow the traveler home.
But she said the constables would take us up, if we did; and so I never
saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me; and
several times I dreamt of him, and thought his great eyes were grown
still larger and rounder; and once I had a vision of the date tree.
In course of time, my thoughts became more and more prone to dwell upon
foreign things; and in a thousand ways I sought to gratify my tastes.
We had several pieces of furniture in the house, which had been brought
from Europe. These I examined again and again, wondering where the wood
grew; whether the workmen who made them still survived, and what they
could be doing with themselves now.
Then we had several oil-paintings and rare old engravings of my
father’s, which he himself had bought in Paris, hanging up in the
dining-room.
Two of these were sea-pieces. One represented a fat-looking, smoky
fishing-boat, with three whiskerandoes in red caps, and their browsers
legs rolled up, hauling in a seine. There was high French-like land in
one corner, and a tumble-down gray lighthouse surmounting it. The waves
were toasted brown, and the whole picture looked mellow and old. I used
to think a piece of it might taste good.
The other represented three old-fashioned French men-of-war with high
castles, like pagodas, on the bow and stern, such as you see in
Froissart; and snug little turrets on top of the mast, full of little
men, with something undefinable in their hands. All three were sailing
through a bright-blue sea, blue as Sicily skies; and they were leaning
over on their sides at a fearful angle; and they must have been going
very fast, for the white spray was about the bows like a snow-storm.
Then, we had two large green French portfolios of colored prints, more
than I could lift at that age. Every Saturday my brothers and sisters
used to get them out of the corner where they were kept, and spreading
them on the floor, gaze at them with never-failing delight.
They were of all sorts. Some were pictures of Versailles, its
masquerades, its drawing-rooms, its fountains, and courts, and gardens,
with long lines of thick foliage cut into fantastic doors and windows,
and towers and pinnacles. Others were rural scenes, full of fine skies,
pensive cows standing up to the knees in water, and shepherd-boys and
cottages in the distance, half concealed in vineyards and vines.
And others were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses
and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of
a great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three
boats sailing after it as fast as they could fly.
Then, too, we had a large library-case, that stood in the hall; an old
brown library-case, tall as a small house; it had a sort of basement,
with large doors, and a lock and key; and higher up, there were glass
doors, through which might be seen long rows of old books, that had
been printed in Paris, and London, and Leipsic. There was a fine
library edition of the Spectator, in six large volumes with gilded
backs; and many a time I gazed at the word _“London”_ on the
title-page. And there was a copy of D’Alembert in French, and I
wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should
ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book,
which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I
so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant we
had.
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