About the picture: "All is Vanity" by Charles Allan Gilbert (1873-1929) Many magazines and early admirers displayed this illusion-drawing as a curiosity or conversation piece.
While Lyndon Baines Johnson was growing up in Johnson City, his mother used Gilbert's "All is Vanity" as a teaching aid. The portrait hung over the fireplace in the parlor where Rebekah Johnson tutored high school students in public speaking and coached the debate team. The mother of the thirty-sixth president often pointed to the picture and reminded her son and other students never to judge by first impression and things are not always what they seem.
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