observation and manipulation of their bumps previous to engaging them.

I remember once, when I was sitting to Lawrence Macdonald for my bust,
which was one of the first he ever executed, before he left Edinburgh to
achieve fame and fortune as the most successful marble portrait-maker in
Rome, an absurd instance of Mr. Combe's insight into character occurred
at my expense.

Macdonald was an intimate friend of the Combes, and I used to see him at
their house very frequently, and Mr. Combe often came to the studio when
I was sitting. One day while he was standing by, grimly observing
Macdonald's absorbed manipulation of his clay, while I, the original
_clay_, occupied the "bad eminence" of an artist's studio throne, my
aunt came in with a small paper bag containing raspberry tarts in her
hand. This was a dainty so peculiarly agreeable to me that, even at that
advanced stage of my existence, those who loved me, or wished to be
loved by me, were apt to approach me with those charming three-cornered
puff paste propitiations.

As soon as I espied the confectioner's light paper bag I guessed its
contents, and, springing from my dignified station, seized on the tarts
as if I had been the notorious knave of the nursery rhyme. "There now,
Macdonald, I told you so!" quoth Mr. Combe, and they both began to
laugh; and so did I, with my mouth full of raspberry puff, for it was
quite evident to me that my phrenological friend had impressed upon my
artistic friend the special development of my organ of alimentiveness,
as he politely called it, which I translated into the vulgate as "bump
of greediness." In spite of my reluctance to sit to him, from the
conviction that the thick outline of my features would turn the edge of
the finest chisel that "ever yet cut breath," and perhaps by dint of
phrenology, Macdonald succeeded in making a very good bust of me; and
some time after, to my great amusement, having seen me act in the
"Grecian Daughter," he said to me, "Oh, but what I want to do now is a
statue of you."

"Yes," said I, "and I will tell you exactly where--in the last scene,
where I cover my face."

"Precisely so!" cried my enthusiastic friend, and then burst out
laughing, on seeing the trap I had laid for him; but he was a very
honest man, and stood by his word.

The attitude he wished to represent in a statue was that when, having
stabbed Dionysius, I raised the dagger toward heaven with one hand, and
drew my drapery over