The astonishment, the terror, and subsequently the fun,
produced by this ingenious device may easily be imagined. The sufferers,
like the fox who had lost his tail, brought their friends, and enjoyed
the fun of leading them into the same scrape. The "room adjoining the
Western Museum" was more thronged than ever, and little Dorfeuille
reaped a golden harvest. How large a share of it found its way into the
pockets of the ingenious artist I know not--probably a much smaller one
than fair play would have assigned him.

In the long after years at Florence, Powers and I had many a laugh
together over his reminiscences of the scenes that occurred in that
exhibition-room, all of which he remembered as well as if the incidents
had happened but a year before, and would chuckle over with as much
enjoyment as he did at the time of their occurrence. My copy of the
hand-bill which I have given above--doubtless the only one now in
existence--was matter of much amusement to us, and served to recall
every portion and every figure of the early work of his hands.

From the time I left America to go to Oxford, in the spring of 1829,
till our meeting at Florence in 1841, I saw no more of Powers. But, as
may be easily imagined, we lost no time in renewing our old friendship.
He was then, and for many years afterward, living in the Via Romana, not
far from the city gate of that name. The house stood back from the
street, and was approached only by a passage through another tenement,
from which it was divided by a little garden; a situation which, though
not in all respects convenient, had at least the advantage of securing
quietude. The young sculptor, with his already numerous and rapidly
increasing family, occupied the first and second floors, while the
ground floor was exclusively devoted to workshops and show-rooms. The
premises were large and the accommodations ample. Already few Americans
came to Florence without paying a visit to the "Studio Powers," but they
were in those days but few in comparison to the number which, partly as
residents and partly as merely passing tourists, throng every winter the
fair "City of Flowers." Up to the revolution of 1848 the English at
Florence were very far more numerous than the citizens of the other
English-speaking nation. That unsuccessful movement drove many English,
very unnecessarily, from their moorings. The English colony was very
much reduced even after those who returned on the return of t