pect; and my
portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter
always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by his
handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common
workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the
finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting,
which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of
character recognizably presented to the view of others.

Experience, after repeated trials, has proved to me that the only way
of getting sitters who persist in assuming a set look to resume their
habitual expression, is to lead them into talking about some subject
in which they are greatly interested. If I can only beguile them into
speaking earnestly, no matter on what topic, I am sure of recovering
their natural expression; sure of seeing all the little precious
everyday peculiarities of the man or woman peep out, one after another,
quite unawares. The long, maundering stories about nothing, the
wearisome recitals of petty grievances, the local anecdotes unrelieved
by the faintest suspicion of anything like general interest, which I
have been condemned to hear, as a consequence of thawing the ice off
the features of formal sitters by the method just described, would fill
hundreds of volumes, and promote the repose of thousands of readers. On
the other hand, if I have suffered under the tediousness of the many,
I have not been without my compensating gains from the wisdom and
experience of the few. To some of my sitters I have been indebted for
information which has enlarged my mind--to some for advice which has
lightened my heart--to some for narratives of strange adventure which
riveted my attention at the time, which have served to interest and
amuse my fireside circle for many years past, and which are now, I would
fain hope, destined to make kind friends for me among a wider audience
than any that I have yet addressed.

Singularly enough, almost all the best stories that I have heard from my
sitters have been told by accident. I only remember two cases in which
a story was volunteered to me, and, although I have often tried the
experiment, I cannot call to mind even a single instance in which
leading questions (as the lawyers call them) on my part, addressed to a
sitter, ever produced any result worth recording. Over and over again,
I have been disastrously successful in encouraging dull people