But what's worrying me, Billy, is this: The
department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for
$3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone--that's what I can't
understand."
IV
THE DAY RESURGENT
I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes
to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions
of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number.
First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have
free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number
of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known
model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," or whatever it was
that Trilby called it.
Second--the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies.
This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
Third--Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
Fourth--Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy
and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the
higher criticism has hard-boiled them.
The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of
all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception.
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