wrong, and the punch tasted better; but he thought the boys liked the
style of the thing, and I suppose they do. He is a very good-natured
soul, and a very melancholy, and rather a helpless. O, and he has a
third weakness which I came near forgetting. He paints. He has never
been taught, and he's past thirty, and he paints."

"How?" I asked.

"Rather well, I think," was the reply. "That's the annoying part of it.
See for yourself. That panel is his."

I stepped toward the window. It was the old familiar room, with the
tables set like a Greek P, and the sideboard, and the aphasiac piano,
and the panels on the wall. There were Romeo and Juliet, Antwerp from
the river, Enfield's ships among the ice, and the huge huntsman winding
a huge horn; mingled with them a few new ones, the thin crop of a
succeeding generation, not better and not worse. It was to one of these
I was directed; a thing coarsely and wittily handled, mostly with the
palette-knife, the colour in some parts excellent, the canvas in others
loaded with mere clay. But it was the scene, and not the art or want
of it, that riveted my notice. The foreground was of sand and scrub and
wreckwood; in the middle distance the many-hued and smooth expanse of a
lagoon, enclosed by a wall of breakers; beyond, a blue strip of ocean.
The sky was cloudless, and I could hear the surf break. For the place
was Midway Island; the point of view the very spot at which I had landed
with the captain for the first time, and from which I had re-embarked
the day before we sailed. I had already been gazing for some seconds,
before my attention was arrested by a blur on the sea-line; and stooping
to look, I recognised the smoke of a steamer.

"Yes," said I, turning toward Stennis, "it has merit. What is it?"

"A fancy piece," he returned. "That's what pleased me. So few of the
fellows in our time had the imagination of a garden snail."

"Madden, you say his name is?" I pursued.

"Madden," he repeated.

"Has he travelled much?" I inquired.

"I haven't an idea. He is one of the least autobiographical of men. He
sits, and smokes, and giggles, and sometimes he makes small jests;
but his contributions to the art of pleasing are generally confined to
looking like a gentleman and being one. No," added Stennis, "he'll never
suit you, Dodd; you like more head on your liquor. You'll find him as
dull as ditch water."

"Has he big blonde side-whiskers like tusks?" I asked, mindful of the