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Monsieur le Préfet sat down; and for the first time the American diplomatist noticed that his visitor held a small, black, battered portfolio in his right hand. As the Frenchman laid it across his knee, he gave a scarcely perceptible glance round the room; then, at last, his gaze concentrated itself on the table where stood the lamp, and the spread-open newspaper.
Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens' quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment drops its under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder and both preserving, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk 'Now smile, if you please! Bracketed over what-not place of special sacredness an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died.
Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens' quartz, with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment drops its under jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential- campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder and both preserving, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk 'Now smile, if you please! Bracketed over what-not place of special sacredness an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died.
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