MEN I HAVE PAINTED
The background to these two strongly contrasted, and yet characteristically similar, figures was the display of roses and lilies in the window of Pennock's flower shop; and the peculiar picturesqueness of the scene began soon to attract the attention of passers-by, from whose curiosity and admiration I had to rescue them by taking the boy away.
At eleven o'clock I was admitted to the law offices of the distinguished old Quaker, where a portrait, already half finished, was waiting on the easel for the morning's work. The room was indescribable. A faint notion of its character can be obtained from the portrait, in which the accessories are rendered as faithfully in regard to condition and disposition as could be; for Mr. Vaux did not limit me either in the number or extent of the sittings, and I prolonged them purposely, in order to obtain as much of the detail as possible, and also for the pleasure he always gave me by talking, more or less at random, upon politics, signs of the times, philosophy, and religion. One of his favourite and persistent ejaculations was, "I can hear the ringing of the spurs and the clanking of the sword of the man on horseback." As the Republican Party was always in power in Pennsylvania, he had come to the conclusion that a military dictatorship would be necessary to dislodge it.
Between puffs at his cigar—there is one lighted and smoking on the table in the portrait—he would vent his views on the iniquities of all sorts perpetrated by the administrators of the city. He liked the sittings, because he found in me a sympathetic listener. The room was hazy with smoke, through which its unusual picturesqueness appealed to me as no other lawyer's office could do. Those that I have seen in America have been too spick and span, too well ordered, and the books too obviously new, in
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