t been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have
come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per
cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it
was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER."

"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that."

"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder,
nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region
that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three
colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the
window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot
close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that.

"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the
stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in
that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I don't
see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own
the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has got
to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big
rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral
paint on it in three colours. I wish some of the people that talk
about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks
OUT of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we
used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd sing a little
different tune about the profanation of scenery. There ain't any man
enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a
dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do. But I ain't
a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock I come across, as if we
were all a set of dumn Druids. I say the landscape was made for man,
and not man for the landscape."

"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man
and the kidney-cure man."

"It was made for any man that knows how to use it," Lapham returned,
insensible to Bartley's irony. "Let 'em go and live with nature in the
WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough
of her for one while. Well--where was I?"

"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley.

"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place
a start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it
in the gazetteer. I give a pretty good lump of money to buil