paper and laughed. "Look here," he cried. "Here is another
of those dreadful imitators of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Hear this from
a so-called poem in the morning's journal:

'The gorgeous brown reds
Of the full-throated creatures of song.'"

"I don't see anything bad in that," said Eric, helping himself to
another muffin. "What is the matter with you?"

"Matter enough," returned Albert. "Because their masters, sometimes,
daub on colors with their full palettes and strong brushes, this feeble
herd tag after them and flounder around in color and passion in a way
that is sickening."

"Go on," shouted Eric, "he is our own brother, Mae, after all, you see.
Fancy my Lord Utilitarian turning to break a lance in defence of beauty.
Edith, you and the picture-galleries are to blame for this."

Mae had been paying great attention to her rolls and coffee, and very
little apparently to the conversation, but she spoke eagerly now.
"Their masters do not daub. They do hold palettes full of the strongest,
richest colors, and dare lay them, in vivid flecks, on their canvas.
They do not care if they may offend some modern cultivated eyes, used
only to the invisible blues and shadowy greens and that host of cold,
lifeless, toneless grays, of refined conventional art. They know well
enough that their satisfying reds and browns and golds of rich, free
nature will go to the beating hearts of some of us."

Mae had a way of dashing into conversation abruptly, and the Madden
family had been brought up on argument and table-talk. So the rest of
the party ate their breakfast placidly enough. "Mae's right," said Eric,
a trifle grandly, "only, to change the figure of speech for one better
fitted for the occasion, they may satiate, though they never starve you.
But they are wonderfully fine, sometimes. O, bother, I never can
quote, but there is something about 'I will go back to the great sweet
mother."'

"Or this," suggested Mae,

"'And to me thou art matchless and fair
As the tawny sweet twilight, with blended
Sunlight and red stars in her hair.'"

"I love my masters," continued this young enthusiast, "because they
fling all rules aside, and cry out as they choose. It is their very
heart's blood and the lusty wine of life that they give you, not just
a scrap of 'rosemary for remembrance' and a soothing herb-tea made
from the flowers of fancy they have culled from those much travestied,
abominable fields of tho