spread out so as to
have some probability. It does not help much in line, but it does in
mass and in color (in the original). It could be bettered, but it will
do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable position, and helps
to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the
coffee-pot. There is not much light and shade in this composition, nor
much distinction. But it does balance, and would make a good study,
and is a very respectable piece of composition,--simple, modest, and
dignified.

Now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated,
and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same
things in it when completed. We have simply the same group, with the
bottle and glass added. The stout jug in the first group is left out
because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily.
The tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count
either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and
therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our
composition. The things we have here are enough, but they are not
right as they are now. They injure rather than help the last
arrangement. The bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of
it; a composition must be _one thing_, no matter how many objects go
to the making of it. This is two things. Draw a line down between the
bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions,
both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement.

[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 4.=]

Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything. We have now got
two groups and a thing. The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the
bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull
them together, but can't. The plaque has no connection with anything.
They are all pulled apart. In the last group at least there was some
chief mass, the first complete composition. Now every one is for
himself; three up and down lines and a circle--that's about what it
amounts to.

[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 5.=]

Let's group them,--push them together. Place the bottle near the
coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot
dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.

[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 6.=]

Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the
centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will bala