He returned home earlier than usual the next day, and fixed the mirror
to the wall, over the hearth, at one end of his long room.
He then carefully wiped away the dust from its face, and, clear as the
water of a sunny spring, the mirror shone out from beneath the envious
covering. But his interest was chiefly occupied with the curious carving
of the frame. This he cleaned as well as he could with a brush; and then
he proceeded to a minute examination of its various parts, in the hope
of discovering some index to the intention of the carver. In this,
however, he was unsuccessful; and, at length, pausing with some
weariness and disappointment, he gazed vacantly for a few moments into
the depth of the reflected room. But ere long he said, half aloud: "What
a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity exists between
it and a man's imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in
the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere
representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were
reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared.
The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of
art; and the very representing of it to me has clothed with interest
that which was otherwise hard and bare; just as one sees with delight
upon the stage the representation of a character from which one would
escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome. But is it not
rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our
senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and,
appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some
degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the
child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true
import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein
without questioning? That skeleton, now--I almost fear it, standing
there so still, with eyes only for the unseen, like a watch-tower
looking across all the waste of this busy world into the quiet regions
of rest beyond. And yet I know every bone and every joint in it as well
as my own fist. And that old battle-axe looks as if any moment it might
be caught up by a mailed hand, and, borne forth by the mighty arm, go
crashing through casque, and skull, and brain, invading the Unknown with
yet another bewildered ghost. I should like to live in THAT room if I
could only get into it."