be fully justified of its
follower in Pymantoning as well as in Paris. That golden dust along the
track; the level tops of the buggies drawn up within its ellipse, and
the groups scattered about in gypsy gayety on the grass there; the dark
blur of men behind the barrier; the women, with their bright hats and
parasols, massed flower-like,--all made him long to express them in
lines and dots and breadths of pure color. He had caught the vital
effect of the whole, and he meant to interpret it so that its truth
should be felt by all who had received the light of the new faith in
painting, who believed in the prismatic colors as in the ten
commandments, and who hoped to be saved by tone-contrasts. For the
others, Ludlow was at that day too fanatical an impressionist to care.
He owed a duty to France no less than to America, and he wished to
fulfil it in a picture which should at once testify to the excellence
of the French method and the American material. At twenty-two, one is
often much more secure and final in one's conclusions than one is
afterwards.

He was vexed that a lingering doubt of the subject had kept him from
bringing a canvas with him at once, and recording his precious first
glimpses of it. But he meant to come to the trotting-match the next day
again, and then he hoped to get back to his primal impression of the
scene, now so vivid in his mind. He made his way down the benches, and
out of the enclosure of the track. He drew a deep breath, full of the
sweet smell of the bruised grass, forsaken now by nearly all the feet
that had trodden it. A few old farmers, who had failed to get places
along the railing and had not cared to pay for seats on the stand, were
loitering about, followed by their baffled and disappointed wives. The
men occasionally stopped at the cattle-pens, but it was less to look at
the bulls and boars and rams which had taken the premiums, and wore
cards or ribbons certifying the fact, than to escape a consciousness of
their partners, harassingly taciturn or voluble in their reproach. A
number of these embittered women brokenly fringed the piazza of the
fair-house, and Ludlow made his way toward them with due sympathy for
their poor little tragedy, so intelligible to him through the memories
of his own country-bred youth. He followed with his pity those who
sulked away through the deserted aisles of the building, and nursed
their grievance among the prize fruits and vegetables, and the fruits