Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.. Fern Fanny

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СКАЧАТЬ bag of flour, surmounted by an apple. His head was ornamented with sparse spires of fiery red hair; on his cheeks, a pair of cream-colored whiskers were feebly struggling into life; and sundry tufts of the same color, under his chin, shadowed forth his editorial sympathy with the recent “Beard Movement.” Before him was a table, of doubtful hue and architecture, laden with manuscripts, accepted, rejected, and under consideration; letters of all sizes, opened and unopened, prepaid and unpaid, saucy and silly, defiant and deprecatory. There was also an inkstand, crusted with dirt and cobwebs; a broken paper weight, pinning down some bad money, paid by distant subscribers; a camphene lamp, with a broken pedestal, propped up by a Directory on one side, and Walker’s Dictionary on the other; sundry stumps of cigars; a half-eaten apple; a rind of an orange; a lady’s glove, and a box of bilious pills.

      Will stepped before him, and made known his errand. Mr. John Howard looked at him, with a portentous scowl, inspected him very much as he would a keg of doubtful mackerel, and then referred him to the foreman of the office, Mr. Jack Punch. Jack had been victimized, in the way of office boys, for an indefinite period, with precocious city urchins, who smoked long nines, talked politics, discussed theatricals, and knew more of city haunts than the police themselves. Of course he lost no time in securing a boy to whose verdant feet the plow-soil was still clinging. Will’s business was to open the office at half past six in the morning, sweep it out, make the fires, go to the post-office for letters and exchanges, wrap up papers for new subscribers, carry them to the post, and see that the mail was properly “got off.” To all these requirements, Will immediately subscribed.

      On Will’s daily tramps to and from the office, he was obliged to pass Lithe & Co.’s magnificent show window, where the choicest pictures and engravings were constantly exposed for sale. There he might be seen loitering, entranced and spellbound, quite oblivious of the Chronicle, hour after hour, weaving bright visions – building air castles, with which his overseer, Mr. Jack Punch, had little sympathy. Yes; Will had at length found out what he was made for. He knew now why he had lain under the trees, of a bright summer day, watching the fleecy clouds go sailing by, in such a dreamy rapture; why the whispering leaves, and waving fields of grain, and drooping branches of graceful trees, and the mirror-like beauty of the placid lake, reflecting a mimic heaven; why the undulating hills, and mist-wreathed valleys, with their wealth of leaf, and buds and blossom, filled his eyes with tears and his soul with untold joy, and why, when slumber sealed each weary lid under the cottage eaves, he stood alone, hushing his very breath, awestruck, beneath the holy stars.

      Poor Will, his occupation became so distasteful! Poor Will, winged for a “bird of paradise,” and forced to be a mole, burrowing under the earth, when he would fain try his new-found pinions! To Jack’s intense disgust, he soon detected Will in drawing rude sketches on bits of paper, stray wrappers, and backs of letters; even the walls were “done in crayons,” by the same mischievous fingers. His vision was so filled “with the curved line of beauty,” that he was constantly committing the most egregious blunders. He misplaced the bundles of newspapers which he carried to the post-office; placing the “north” packages on the “south” table, the east on the north, the south on the east, &c.; mixing them up generally and indescribably and inextricably, so that the subscribers to the “Weekly Chronicle” did not receive their papers with that precision and regularity which is acknowledged to be desirable, particularly in small country places, where the blacksmith’s shop, the engine house, and “the newspaper” form a trio not to be despised by the simple-hearted, primitive farmers.

      Jack, whose private opinion it was that he should have been christened Job, being obliged to shoulder all the short-comings of his assistants, and being worked up to a pitch of frenzy by letters from incensed subscribers, which Mr. Howard constantly thrust in his face, very unceremoniously ejected Will from the premises, one morning, by a vigorous application of the toe of his boot.

      The world was again a closed oyster to Will. How to open it? that was the question. Our hero thought the best place to consider the matter was at Lithe & Co.’s shop-window. Just as he reached it, a gentleman passed out of the shop, followed by a lad bearing a small framed landscape. Perhaps the gentleman was an artist! Perhaps he could employ him in some way! Will resolved to follow him.

      Up one street and down another, round corners and through squares – the gentleman’s long legs seemed to be shod with the famed seven-leagued boots. At length he stopped before the door of an unpretending looking building, and handing the lad who accompanied him a bit of money, he took from him the picture, and was just springing up the steps, when he lost his balance, and the picture was jerked violently from his hand, but only to be caught by the watchful Will, who restored it to its owner uninjured.

      “Thank you, my boy,” said the gentleman, “you have done me a greater service than you think for;” at the same time offering him some money.

      “No, I thank you,” said Will, proudly. “I do not wish to be paid for it.”

      “As you please, Master Independence,” replied the gentleman, laughing; “but is there no other way I can serve you?”

      “Are you an artist?” asked Will.

      The gentleman raised his eyebrows, with a comical air, and replied, “Well, sometimes I think I am, and then, again, I don’t know; but what if I were?”

      “I should so like to be an artist,” said Will, the quick flush mounting to his temples.

      “You!” exclaimed the gentleman, taking a minute survey of Will’s nondescript toute ensemble, “Do you ever draw?”

      “Sometimes,” replied Will, “when I can get a bit of charcoal, and a white wall. I was just kicked out of the Chronicle office for doing it.”

      “Follow me,” said the gentleman, tapping him familiarly on the cheek.

      Will needed no second invitation. Climbing one flight of stairs, he found himself in a small studio, lined on all sides by pictures; some finished and framed, others in various stages of progression. Pallets, brushes, and crayons, lay scattered round an easel; while in one corner was an artist’s lay figure, which, in the dim light of the apartment, Will mistook for the artist’s wife, whose presence he respectfully acknowledged by a profound bow, to the infinite amusement of his patron.

      Mr. Lester was delighted with Will’s naive criticisms on his pictures, and his profound reverence for art. A few days found him quite domesticated in his new quarters; and months passed by swift as a weaver’s shuttle, and found him as happy as a crowned prince; whether grinding colors for the artist, or watching the progress of his pencil, or picking up stray crumbs of knowledge from the lips of connoisseurs, who daily frequented the studio; and many a rough sketch did Will make in his little corner, that would have made them open their critical eyes wide with wonder.

      “What a foolish match!” Was an engagement ever announced that did not call forth this remark, from some dissenting lip? Perhaps it was a “foolish match.” Meta had no dower but her beauty, and Will had no capital but his pallet and easel. The gossips said she “might have done much better.” There was old Mr. Hill, whose head was snow white, but whose gold was as yellow and as plenty as Meta’s bright ringlets; and Mr. Vesey, whose father made a clergyman of him, because he didn’t know enough to be a merchant; and Lawyer Givens, with his carrotty head and turn-up nose, and chin that might have been beat; and Falstaff-ian Captain Reef, who brought home such pretty china shawls and grass cloth dresses, and who had as many wives as a Grand Turk. Meta might have had any one of these by hoisting her little finger. Foolish Meta! money and misery in one scale, poverty and love in the other. Miserable little Meta! And yet she does not look so very miserable, as she leans over her husband’s shoulder, and sees the landscape brighten on the canvass, or presses her rosy lips to his forehead, or arranges the fold of a curtain for the desired light and shade, or grinds his colors with her own dainty little fingers; no, she СКАЧАТЬ