bum things.  Some I suppose he did, like me, by lamplight.  Some he sketched with one hand while he was lighting that there long pipe with the other.  Sometimes, I guess, he was in a hurry for the money.  Now, when I’m painting my level best, like I used to could, mine are about like that.  But people don’t know the difference about him or about me; and mine, as I told your Jew friend, are plenty good enough for every-day purposes.  Used to be, anyway.  Nobody can paint like his best.  Think of it, young feller, you and me is painters and know what it means—­jest a little dirty paint on white canvas, and you see the creeping of the sunrise over the land, the breathing of the mist from the fields, and the twinkling of the dew in the young leaves.  Nobody but him could paint that, and I guess he never knowed how he done it; he jest felt it in his brush, it seems to me.’

“After this outburst little more was to be got from him.  In a word, he had gone to pieces and knew it.  Beilstein had cast him off; the works in the third manner hung heavy in the auction places.  Leaning over the table, he asked me, ’Who was the gent that said, “My God, what a genius I had when I done that!"?’ I told him that the phrase was given to many, but that I believed Swift was the gent.  ‘Jest so,’ Campbell Corot responded; ’that’s the way I felt the last time I saw Beilstein.  He’d been sending back my things and, for a joke, I suppose, he wrote me to come up and see a real Corot, and take the measure of the job I was tackling.  So up to the avenue I went, and Beilstein first gave me my dressing down and then asked me into the red-plush private room where he takes the big oil and wheat men when they want a little art.  There on the easel was a picture.  He drew the cloth away and said:  “Now, Campbell, that’s what we want in our business.”  As sure as you’re born, sir, it was a “Dance of Nymphs” that I done out of photographs eight years ago.  But I can’t paint like that no more.  I know the way your friend Swift felt; only I guess my case is worse than his.’

“The mention of photographs gave me a clue to Campbell Corot’s artistic methods.  It appeared that Beilstein had kept him in the best reproductions of the master.  But on this point the disciple was reticent, evading my questions by a motion to go.  ‘I’m not for long probably,’ he said, as he refused a second glass.  ’You’ve been patient while I’ve talked—­I can’t to most—­and I don’t want you to remember me drunk.  Take good care of yourself, and, generally speaking, don’t start your whisky till your day’s painting is done.’  I stood for some minutes on the corner of Broadway as his gaunt form merged into the glow that fell full into Cedar Street from the setting sun.  I wondered if the hour recalled the old days on the farm and the formation of his first manner.