The Aristocratic Miss Brewster by Joseph C. Lincoln

Mr. Benjamin Brewster's address, or lecture, in the vestry of the old First Church was a huge success. It was postponed several times, owing to the lecturer's uncertain health, but at last it was given. The vestry held a distinguished audience, the very best people of Wapatomac and select delegations from Ostable and Bayport. The subject was "Art," a somewhat vague but gratifyingly uplifting topic. Some of Mr. Brewster's hearers, particularly of the masculine persuasion, were far from certain what it was all about, but they kept their uncertainties to themselves. And their wives and daughters hung enraptured upon the words which fell from the speaker's lips.

Brewster had traveled, although neither as much nor as far as some of the retired captains who listened to him. But their travels had not included foreign picture galleries and they knew nothing of the "French School" or the "Dutch School," of Rembrandt, nor Van Dyke, nor Raphael, nor Michelangelo. Benjamin's gifted tongue dealt lightly with "distance," and "handling," with "feeling" and "depth" and "touch." Elvira Bradley's virginal bosom thrilled with strange emotions as she looked and listened and Captain Eben Baker mopped his perspiring forehead with his handkerchief and whispered in his wife's ear: "Good Lord! how that fellow can wrastle the dictionary. I didn't know there was so many long words in the manifest."