On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked,
and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which
you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of
systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors,
that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose.
Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at
first you almost thought some ambitious young artist,
in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate
chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation,
and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open
the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last
come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild,
might not be altogether unwarranted.
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over
three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.
A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive
a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,
half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze
you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself
to find out what that marvellous painting meant.
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