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Agent  

No 2

18

a work. I allude to Mrs L.M. Spencer's picture of "Truth unvailing falsehood" now on exhibition at No 5 Waverly Place New York. I had seen and heard much about it in the papers and from other sources, and had thought of going to see it. But it slipped my mind when time would have permitted, and probably would have done so yet but for a criticism in the New York Herald of Sunday June 19th which spurred me up to go.

The criticism was intended to be an unfavorable one, but it struck me as containing a decidedly important commendation, all the more weighty for being given kind of semi-involuntary, as admitting a one slight redeeming quality of the picture amid what he regarded as a representation of a "Farago of allegorical and metaphysical balderdash". He spoke of a mother and a child in it as containing a touch of real feeling and tenderness &c. I thought this coming in spite of his evident repugnance to the general metaphisical and allegorical character of the picture amounted to saying that here was a good representation of the ideal motherhood - one that all his contempt for its general idea could not

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