but here the people are at the wrong end of the cables,
and the situation is not good. Only one thing
seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door,
in the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money
that was theirs yesterday is gone away, and it may
never come back again. So all the work that won
the money must be done over again; but some of the
people are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened.
It is a very sorrowful little community that goes
to bed to-night, and there must be as sad ones the
world over. Let it be written, however, that of
the sections under fire here (and some are cruelly
hit) no man whined, or whimpered, or broke down.
There was no chance of fighting. It was bitter
defeat, but they took it standing.
‘Some men when they grow rich, store pictures
in a gallery,’ Living, their friends envy them,
and after death the genuineness of the collection
is disputed under the dispersing hammer.
A better way is to spread your picture over all earth;
visiting them as Fate allows. Then none can steal
or deface, nor any reverse of fortune force a sale;
sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery
for nothing, and—in spite of all that has
been said of her crudeness—Nature is not
altogether a bad frame-maker. The knowledge that
you may never live to see an especial treasure twice
teaches the eyes to see quickly while the light lasts;
and the possession of such a gallery breeds a very
fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary things
that are called pictures.
In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go
westward, hangs a small study of no particular value
as compared with some others. The mist is down
on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist
the bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated.
In the foreground, all but leaping out of the frame,
an open rowboat, painted the rawest blue and white,
rides up over the shoulder of a swell. A man in
blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture,
stands at the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied
sea-otter from whose pelt the wet drips in moonstones.
Now the artist who could paint the silver wash of
the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat,
and the raw red wrists of the man would be something
of a workman.
But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at
present. Three years since, I met an artist in
the stony bed of a brook, between a line of 300 graven,
lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing
horribly. He had been trying to paint one of my
pictures—nothing more than a big water-worn
rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill for
background. Most naturally he failed, because
there happened to be absolutely no perspective in
the thing, and he was pulling the lines about to make
some for home consumption. No man can put the
contents of a gallon jar into a pint mug. The
protests of all uncomfortably-crowded mugs since the
world began have settled that long ago, and have given
us the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments
for imperfect instruments, which are called Rules
of Art.
