was supposed to be in Venice to study with Duveneck, at whose studio
he was said to arrive regularly at the same hour every morning. And as
regularly he was snoring before he had been sitting in front of his
easel for ten minutes. During his nap, Duveneck would come round and
shake him and before he slept again put a touch to the study and, as
Arnold promptly dozed off, would work on it until it was finished, and
unless it slid down the canvas with the quantity of bitumen Arnold
used--there was one story of the beautiful eyes in a beautiful portrait,
before they could be stopped, sliding into the chin of the pretty girl
who was posing--Arnold, waking up eventually, would carry off the
painting unconscious that he had not finished it himself. Nobody can say
how many Duvenecks are masquerading at home as Arnolds while their
owners wonder why Arnold has never since done any work a tenth as good.

The one thing that roused him was baseball, and he was in fine form on
the afternoons when he and a few other enthusiasts spent an hour or so
on the Lido for practice. The Englishmen did not believe in the
prodigies they heard of him as a baseball player. It wasn't easy for
anybody to believe that a man who was always tumbling off to sleep on
the slightest provocation could play anything decently. But I was told
that one day he was wide enough awake to be irritated, and he bet them a
dinner he could pitch the swell British cricketer among them three balls
not any one of which the Briton could catch. And on Easter Monday they
all went over to the Lido. The Briton asked for a high ball: it skimmed
along near the ground and then rose over his head as he stooped for it.
He asked for a low one: it came straight for his nose and, when he
dodged it, dropped and went between his legs. He asked for a medium one:
it curved away out to the right, he rushed for it, it curved back again
and took him in his manly bosom. The rest of the Britons and "the boys,"
they say, enjoyed the dinner more than he did. Such was the affair as it
was described to me and confirmed by gossip. I pretend to no authority
on a subject I understand so little as balls and the pitching of them.

A better contrast to Arnold could not have been found than the artist
with the part Spanish, part German name who called himself a Frenchman,
and who aimed to give his pose the mystery that crept, or bounded when
encouraged, into his incessant talk. I am afraid his chief encoura