oet, if not a painter.

But the fourth--an energetic-looking man with a somewhat arrogant
manner--said briskly: "Perchance the ass is right; these pine needles are
becoming monotonous, and I have seventeen million four hundred and
sixty-two thousand five hundred and eleven more to do. Beshrew me if I do
not take to pot-boiling!"

Down by the water-side a lady sat, sketching in water-colours for dear
life; around her lay a litter of half-finished works, scattered like
autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. I approached her, quite friendly, and
offered to gather them up for her--at least some of them, saying
soothingly, for I saw she was in a temper--

"Dear, dear, Clara, why, what _is_ the matter?"

"I am painting the Venice of the East," she cried petulantly, "but for the
life of me I can't see a campanile, and how can I possibly paint a picture
without a campanile?"

I understood that, of course, she couldn't, so I stole away softly on
tip-toe, leaving her turning doungas into gondolas for all she was worth.

A dark, dapper man, with an alert air and an eyeglass, sat near the
seventh bridge, writing. Beside him stood an easel and other painting-gear.
I asked him what he was doing, and he answered, with a fine smile, "I am
gently making enemies;" so, to turn the subject, I picked up a large
canvas, smeared over with invisible grey, like the broadside of a modern
battleship, and sprinkled here and there with pale yellow blobs.

"What have we here, James?" I inquired cheerfully, and he, staying his
claw-like hand in mid-air, made reply--

"A chromatic in tones of sad colour, with golden accidentals--Kashmir
night-lights."

"Ah! quite so," I exclaimed; "but have I got it right side up?"

He looked at it doubtfully for a moment, then, pointing to a remarkable
butterfly (_Vanessa Sifflerius_) depicted in the corner, cried: "It's all
right; you'll never make a mistake if you keep this insect in the _right
bottom corner_. It is put there on purpose."

Lastly, on an eminence I saw a man like an eagle, sitting facing full the
sun, and upon his glowing canvas was portrayed the heavens above and the
earth beneath and the waters under the earth, and behind him sat one who
patted him upon the back, and looked at intervals over his shoulder at the
glorious work, and then wrote in a book a eulogy thereof; and I, too, came
and looked over the painter's shoulder, and I muttered, with Oliver
Wendell Holmes,

"The foreground golden