But
to Nature's tricks with boughs and roots and smaller vegetable growths
there is no end. Her fancy is infinite, and her humor not always
refined. There is a perpetual reminiscence of animal life in her rude
caricatures, which sometimes actually reach the point of imitating the
complete human figure, as in that extraordinary specimen which nobody
will believe to be genuine, except the men of science, and of which the
discreet reader may have a glimpse by application in the proper quarter.
Elsie had gathered so many of these sculpture-like monstrosities, that
one might have thought she had robbed old Sophy's grandfather of his
fetishes. They helped to give her room a kind of enchanted look, as if a
witch had her home in it. Over the fireplace was a long, staff-like
branch, strangled in the spiral coils of one of those vines which strain
the smaller trees in their clinging embraces, sinking into the bark until
the parasite becomes almost identified with its support. With these
sylvan curiosities were blended objects of art, some of them not less
singular, but others showing a love for the beautiful in form and color,
such as a girl of fine organization and nice culture might naturally be
expected to feel and to indulge, in adorning her apartment.
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