If we spent our whole time in this city in mere pleasure and amusement, you would be the first to reproach yourself, Augusta." A few minutes later, when we had crossed the stone quadrangle and mounted the stairs, and stood with our catalogue in the Salle Lacaze, momma said that she wouldn't have missed it for anything.

She sank ecstatic upon a bench, and gave to every individual picture upon the opposite wall the tribute of her intensest admiration.

It was a pleasure to see her enjoying herself so much; and poppa and I vainly tried to keep up to her with the catalogue.
"Oh, why haven't we such things in Chicago!" she exclaimed, at which the Senator checked her mildly.
"It's a mere question of time," said he.

"It isn't reasonable to expect Pre-Raphaelites in a new country.

But give us three or four hundred years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages." Poppa is such an optimist about Chicago.
The Senator went on in a strain of criticism of the pictures perfectly moderate and kindly--nothing he wouldn't have said to the artists themselves--until momma interrupted him.