s example of
industry, vivid imagination, good-cheer and good taste have had an
incalculable influence on art. We have more canvases from his hand than
from the hand of any other master. And these pictures are a quarry to
which every artist of today, consciously or unconsciously, is indebted."

MEISSONIER

I never hesitate about scraping out the work of days, and
beginning afresh, so as to satisfy myself, and try to do better.
Ah! that "better" which one feels in one's soul, and without
which no true artist is ever content!

Others may approve and admire; but that counts for nothing,
compared with one's own feeling of what ought to be.

--_Meissonier's Conversations_

[Illustration: MEISSONIER]

Life in this world is a collecting, and all the men and women in it are
collectors.

The question is, What will you collect? Most men are intent on collecting
dollars. Their waking-hours are taken up with inventing plans, methods,
schemes, whereby they may secure dollars from other men. To gather as
many dollars as possible, and to give out as few, is the desideratum. But
when you collect one thing you always incidentally collect others. The
fisherman who casts his net for shad usually secures a few other fish,
and once in a while a turtle, which enlarges the mesh to suit, and gives
sweet liberty to the shad. To focus exclusively on dollars is to secure
jealousy, fear, vanity, and a vaulting ambition that may claw its way
through the mesh and let your dollars slip into the yeasty deep.

Ragged Haggard and his colleague, Cave-of-the-Winds, collect bacteria;
while the fashionable young men of the day, with a few exceptions, are
collecting headaches, regrets, weak nerves, tremens, paresis--death. Of
course we shall all die (I will admit that), and further, we may be a
long time dead (I will admit that), and moreover, we may be going through
the world for the last time--as to that I do not know; but while we are
here it seems the part of reason to devote our energies to collecting
that which brings as much quiet joy to ourselves, and as little annoyance
to others, as possible.

My heart goes out to the collector. In the soul of the collector of old
books, swords, pistols, brocades, prints, clocks and bookplates, there is
only truth. If he gives you his friendship, it is because you love the
things that he loves; he has no selfish wish to use your good name to
further his own petty