{"product_id":"2940148788201","title":"A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car (Illustrated)","description":"ON a lovely day in September, at that season when the most sentimental of the young maples have begun to redden along the hidden courses of the meadow streams, and the elms, with a sudden impression of despair in their languor, betray flecks of yellow on the green of their pendulous boughs,—on such a day at noon, two young men enter the parlour of the Ponkwasset Hotel, and deposit about the legs of the piano the burdens they have been carrying: a camp-stool namely, a field-easel, a closed box of colours, and a canvas to which, apparently, some portion of reluctant nature[10] has just been transferred. These properties belong to one of the young men, whose general look and bearing readily identify him as their owner: he has a quick, somewhat furtive eye, a full brown beard, and hair that falls in a careless mass down his forehead, which, as he dries it with his handkerchief, sweeping the hair aside, shows broad and white; his figure is firm and square, without heaviness, and in his movement as well as in his face there is something of stubbornness, with a suggestion of arrogance. The other, who has evidently borne his share of the common burdens from a sense of good comradeship, has nothing of the painter in him, nor anything of this painter's peculiar temperament: he has a very abstracted look and a dark, dreaming eye: he is pale, and does not look strong. The painter flings himself into a rocking chair and draws a long breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCummings (for that is the name of the slighter man, who remains standing as he speaks).—\"\"It's warm, isn't it?\"\" His gentle face evinces a curious and kindly interest in his friend's sturdy demonstrations of fatigue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBartlett.—\"\"Yes, hot—confoundedly.\"\" He[11] rubs his handkerchief vigorously across his forehead, and then looks down at his dusty shoes, with apparently no mind to molest them in their dustiness. \"\"The idea of people going back to town in this weather! However, I'm glad they're such asses; it gives me free scope here. Every time I don't hear some young woman banging on that piano, I fall into transports of joy.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCummings, smiling.—\"\"And after to-day you won't be bothered even with me.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBartlett.—\"\"Oh, I shall rather miss you, you know. I like somebody to contradict.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCummings.—\"\"You can contradict the ostler.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBartlett.—\"\"No, I can't. They've sent him away; and I believe you're going to carry off the last of the table-girls with you in the stage to-morrow. The landlord and his wife are to run the concern themselves the rest of the fall. Poor old fellow! The hard times have made lean pickings for him this year. His house wasn't full in the height of the season, and it's been pretty empty since.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCummings.—\"\"I wonder he doesn't shut up altogether.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[12]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBartlett.—\"\"Well, there are a good many transients, as they call them, at this time of year,—fellows who drive over from the little hill-towns with their girls in buggies, and take dinner and supper; then there are picnics from the larger places, ten and twelve miles off, that come to the grounds on the pond, and he always gets something out of them. And as long as he can hope for anything else, my eight dollars a week are worth hanging on to. Yes, I think I shall stay here all through October. I've got no orders, and it's cheap. Besides, I've managed to get on confidential terms with the local scenery; I thought we should like each other last summer, and I feel now that we're ready to swear eternal friendship. I shall do some fairish work here, yet. Phew!\"\" He mops his forehead again, and springing out of his chair he goes up to the canvas, which he has faced to the wall, and turning it about retires some paces, and with a swift, worried glance at the windows falls to considering it critically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCummings.—\"\"You've done some fairish work already, if I'm any judge.\"\" He comes to his friend's side, as if to get his effect of the picture. \"\"I don't believe the spirit of a[13] graceful elm that just begins to feel the approach of autumn was ever better interpreted. There is something tremendously tragical to me in the thing. It makes me think of some lovely and charming girl, all grace and tenderness, who finds the first grey hair in her head. I should call that picture The First Grey Hair.\"\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBartlett, with unheeding petulance.—\"\"The whole thing's too infernally brown! I beg your pardon, Cummings: what were you saying? Go on! I like your prattle about pictures; I do, indeed. I like to see how far you art-cultured fellows can miss all that was in a poor devil's mind when he was at work. But I'd rather you'd sentimentalise my pictures than moralise them. If there's anything that makes me quite limp, it's to have an allegory discovered in one of my poor stupid old landscapes. But The First Grey Hair isn't bad, really.","brand":"Lost Leaf Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47111501906160,"sku":"2940148788201","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148788201_p0.jpg?v=1763714212","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148788201","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}