All through his art, like a vein of gold in the clay he modelled, the thought of her beauty, her sweetness, her excellences ran: "If I could but model her as she appears to me!" he thought over and over; but, then, what artist who is a lover can? "With wings upon her shoulders and the softly flowing white dress she wears on mid-summer afternoons, I think all the world would stop and hold its breath for reverence and love of a figure and face so celestial?" And so, though the task seemed impossible, he had set about it in earnest, and labored on in secret and patiently, until there stood your prototype, prettier, perhaps, than yourself, but still yourself, and none other, O gentle Mary Jones! A charming figure it was, too; not a copy of an antique, or modelled after rules of ancient art; but possessing a maiden-like purity of outline which made equally consistent the muslin skirt or the wings which were not at first sight visible; they were budding wings, rather than matured, and so, perhaps, helped to embody his ideal of a person he believed to be mortally perfect.
When Senator Mecænas saw the statuette—it was nearly life-size, and the most ambitious our hero had modelled—he had much ado to persuade the young sculptor to send it to a neighboring city; but that he did so, and found himself famous, and that Senator Mecænas subsequently obtained for him the order for the great national work in marble upon which he is now engaged, we all know; for it is not a part of the policy of that great man to keep secret the good deeds he perpetrates, but rather to let both hands know what either may be doing. But let us all hope, for our hero's sake, that this great work may not resemble the wonderful pantomime in marble of Columbus perpetually performing on the steps of the national Capitol, which does so much credit to the taste of the committee who accepted it, and is so much more laughable than any pantomime that was ever acted before.
Before it went, however, young Elkhart made a copy of his earth angel in piccolo, and this it was that he brought for a gift to the fair original. She only, of all the village, had seen and praised the statuette; and with her pretty dimpled chin resting in her hand, watching the unwrapping of its lesser fac-simile, was it that she was reminded of the blissful occasion, when they two, standing before his best work,
