But it was on a third class -- neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers , but people of natural sensibility -- that the pictures wrought their strongest effect . Such persons might gaze carelessly at first , but , becoming interested , would return day after day and study these painted faces like the pages of a mystic volume . Walter Ludlow 's portrait attracted their earliest notice . In the absence of himself and his bride they sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended to throw upon the features , all agreeing that there was a look of earnest import , though no two explained it alike . There was less diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor 's picture . They differed , indeed , in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom that dwelt upon her face , but agreed that it was gloom and alien from the natural temperament of their youthful friend . A certain fanciful person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both these pictures were parts of one design , and that the melancholy strength of feeling in Elinor 's countenance bore reference to the more vivid emotion -- or , as he termed it , the wild passion -- in that of Walter . Though unskilled in the art , he even began a sketch in which the action of the two figures was to correspond with their mutual expression . It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor 's face was assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture . Walter , on the other hand , instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas , became reserved and downcast , with no outward flashes of emotion , however it might be smouldering within . In course of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures , under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim them . It was enough . Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her presence . Time wore on , and the painter came again . He had been far enough to the north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills , and to look over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New England 's loftiest mountain . But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of his art . He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George , making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection . He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara , and there , again , had flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice , feeling that he could as soon paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous cataract . In truth , it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face instinct with thought , passion or suffering . With store of such his adventurous ramble had enriched him .
The stern dignity of Indian chiefs , the dusky loveliness of Indian girls , the domestic life of wigwams , the stealthy march , the battle beneath gloomy pine trees , the frontier fortress with its garrison , the anomaly XXXXX the old French partisan bred in courts , but grown gray in shaggy deserts , -- such were the scenes and portraits that he had sketched .
In among as by of on than till upon within