Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait,
which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to any
particular person. Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what the
ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore, must
be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons.
There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes
your features from his outline. It is that you resemble so many
relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness
in your countenance.
He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances, thus:
There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; I never
thought I had a sign of it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye,
those I knew I had. But there is a something which recalls a smile that
faded away from my sister's lips--how many years ago! I thought it so
pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it.
Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait, a bit.
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