"
"It is my portrait," said Mr. Kilbright, his voice trembling as he
spoke. "It was painted by Tatlow Munson in the winter of seventeen
eighty, in payment for my surveying a large tract of land north of the
town, he having no money to otherwise compensate me. He wrote his name
in ink upon the back of the canvas."
Old Mr. Scott took up the picture and turned it around. And there we all
saw plainly written upon the time-stained back, "Tatlow Munson, 1780."
Old Mr. Scott laid the picture upon the table, took off his spectacles,
and with wide-open eyes gazed first at Mr. Kilbright and then at us.
The sight of the picture had finished the conversion of my wife. "Oh,
Mr. Scott," she cried, leaning so far forward in her chair that it
seemed as if she were about to go down on her knees before the old man,
"this gentleman is your grandfather! Yes, he is, indeed! Oh, don't
discard him, for it was you who were the cause of his being here. Don't
you remember when you went to the spiritualist meeting, and asked to see
the spirit of your grandfather? That spirit came, but you didn't know
it. The people who materialized him were surprised when they saw this
young man, and they thought he couldn't be your grandfather, and so they
didn't say anything about it; and they left him right in the middle of
whatever they use, and he kept on materializing without their thinking
of him until he became just what you see him now.
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