A good deal of money was made out of the Greek play by speculators, but
none of it came to me." There was a general expression of regret; and
then Mrs. Thaxter said, as if to herself, "If I were only the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts I know what I would do." A physician at
the house that summer warned Mrs. Paine never to let her husband work so
hard again as he had that year.
I remember William Hunt, the portrait painter, in 1872 wheeling his
youngest child, a beautiful boy named Paul, in a go-cart in front of the
cottage. He looked like an Arab, with a beard nearly to his waist, and a
decidedly Semitic head; but he had an aristocratic style, and the air of
a man who was used to command. His friends congratulated themselves on
his resemblance to Titian, and to the French artist Horace Vernet.
Despite his proud bearing he was a tender-hearted man, and when in
trouble always went to Levi Thaxter, who was a rarely sympathetic
person. In 1879 he came again to the Shoals, flying from domestic
affliction. He was also suffering from a severe nervous strain, the
result of painting two immense pictures in the hall of the New York
Assembly, at Albany; and was no longer able to work. Either of these by
itself he might have contended against, but both together were too much
for him.
One dark, rainy night he left the Thaxter cottage at a late hour,
looking very sad and gloomy.
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