His eyes had now grown so used
to the darkness that he could see everything dimly. He went into his own
room. A picture of himself that used to hang on the wall now stood on
the dresser. He knew very well why, and he knew, too, that his mother
often passed hours in that room.
Below stairs everything was neatness and in order. He went into the
parlor, of which he had stood in so much awe, when he was a little child.
The floor was covered with an imported carpet, mingled brown and red.
A great Bible lay upon a small marble-topped table in the center of the
room. Two larger tables stood against the wall. Upon them lay volumes
of the English classics, and a cluster of wax flowers under a glass cover,
that had seemed wonderful to Dick in his childhood.
But the room awed him no more, and he turned at once to the great squares
of light that faced each other from wall to wall.
A famous portrait painter had arisen at Lexington when the canebrake
was scarcely yet cleared away from the heart of Kentucky. His work was
astonishing to have come out of a country yet a wilderness, and a century
later he is ranked among the great painters.
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