What would have been the use?
Not many days thereafter I got a request to ship my "Dead Hopes," at my
price, to the address of a frame-maker in New York. Elaine's father said
that he had a purchaser for it. I discovered later that he was a master of
pleasant fiction.
When I wondered, long after, to him that he should have bought a
Confederate picture, he convinced me that my picture had nothing
confederate in it; that he had inferred that I had painted it in a catholic
spirit. The lady was in mourning, the flowers faded, the letters too small
for postmark, the picture on the wall a colorless photograph, and the sword
a regulation pattern common to both armies. He thought it very skilfully
planned, and complimented me on it. I was silent. All the Confederate part
and point had been in my mind.
About a year after this--I had been located in New York some months--Elaine
and I came on a visit to Richmond. I might just as well say that it was our
bridal trip.
We looked up Mammy in her comfortable quarters. She had been well provided
for. There was some little confusion in her mind at first as to who Elaine
was, but on being made to understand, called down fervent blessings upon
her head.
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