heerful guidance, "you are altogether wrong. I don't need a dinner
at your new-found Bulgarian table-d'hote--seven courses for seventy-five
cents, and the wine thrown out; nor some of those wonderful Mexican
cheroots warranted to eradicate the tobacco-habit; nor a draught of your
South American melon sherbet that cures all pains, except these which it
causes. None of these things will help me. The doctor suggests that
they do not suit my temperament. Let us go home together and have a
shower-bath and a dinner of herbs, with just a reminiscence of the
stalled ox--and a bout at backgammon to wind up the evening. That will
be the most comfortable prescription."

"But you mistake me," said he; "I am not thinking of any creature
comforts for you. I am prescribing for your mind. There is a picture
that I want you to see; not a coloured photograph, nor an exercise in
anatomical drawing; but a real picture that will rest the eyes of your
heart. Come away with me to Morgenstern's gallery, and be healed."

As we turned into the lower end of Fifth Avenue, it seemed as if I
were being gently floated along between the modest apartment-houses and
old-fashioned dwellings, and prim, respectable churches, on the smooth
current of Pierrepont's talk about his new-found picture. How often a
man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They
are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the
mental desert of the despondent.

"You remember Falconer," continued Pierrepont, "Temple Falconer, that
modest, quiet, proud fellow who came out of the South a couple of years
ago and carried off the landscape prize at the Academy last year, and
then disappeared? He had no intimate friends here, and no one knew what
had become of him. But now this picture appears, to show what he has
been doing. It is an evening scene, a revelation of the beauty of
sadness, an idea expressed in colours--or rather, a real impression of
Nature that awakens an ideal feeling in the heart. It does not define
everything and say nothing, like so many paintings. It tells no story,
but I know it fits into one. There is not a figure in it, and yet it
is alive with sentiment; it suggests thoughts which cannot be put
into words. Don't you love the pictures that have that power of
suggestion--quiet and strong, like Homer Martin's 'Light-house' up at
the Century, with its sheltered bay heaving softly under the pallid
greenish sky of evening, a