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"
Yes," she said, "I was the model. He has no model but me. I have stood
for this many and many an hour--and you can't think how it does tire
one! But I don't mind it. He works all day at the shop; and then, nights
and Sundays he works on his statue as long as I can keep up."
She got a big chisel, to use as a lever, and between us we managed to
twist the pedestal round and round, so as to afford a view of the statue
from all points. Well, sir, it was perfectly charming, this girl's
innocence and purity---exhibiting her naked self, as it were, to a
stranger and alone, and never once dreaming that there was the slightest
indelicacy about the matter. And so there wasn't; but it will be many
along day before I run across another woman who can do the like and show
no trace of self-consciousness.
Well, then we sat down, and I took a smoke, and she told me all about
her people in Massachusetts--her father is a physician and it is an old
and respectable family--(I am able to believe anything she says.) And
she told me how "Karl" is 26 years old; and how he has had passionate
longings all his life toward art, but has always been poor and obliged
to struggle for his daily bread; and how he felt sure that if he could
only have one or two lessons in--
"Lessons? Hasn't he had any lessons?"
No. He had never had a lesson.
574
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