u will adopt the method of treatment to
which I owe my life, and something more than my life--my reason."

He turned his own library-chair towards me, and seated himself. A few
moments passed in silence; his expression was very earnest and
absorbed, and he regarded my face with a sympathetic interest which
touched me profoundly. Though I felt myself becoming more and more
enervated and apathetic as the time went on, and though I knew I was
gradually sinking down again into my old Slough of Despond, yet I felt
instinctively that I was somehow actively concerned in what was about
to be said, therefore I forced myself to attend closely to every word
uttered. Cellini began to speak in low and quiet tones as follows:

"You must be aware, mademoiselle, that those who adopt any art as a
means of livelihood begin the world heavily handicapped--weighted down,
as it were, in the race for fortune. The following of art is a very
different thing to the following of trade or mercantile business. In
buying or selling, in undertaking the work of import or export, a good
head for figures, and an average quantity of shrewd common sense, are
all that is necessary in order to win a fair share of success. But in
the finer occupations, whose results are found in sculpture, painting,
music and poetry, demands are made upon the imagination, the emotions,
the entire spiritual susceptibility of man. The most delicate fibres of
the brain are taxed; the subtle inner workings of thought are brought
into active play; and the temperament becomes daily and hourly more
finely strung, more sensitive, more keenly alive to every passing
sensation. Of course there are many so-called 'ARTISTS' who are mere
shams of the real thing; persons who, having a little surface-education
in one or the other branch of the arts, play idly with the paint-brush,
or dabble carelessly in the deep waters of literature,--or borrow a few
crotchets and quavers from other composers, and putting them together
in haste, call it ORIGINAL COMPOSITION. Among these are to be found the
self-called 'professors' of painting; the sculptors who allow the work
of their 'ghosts' to be admired as their own; the magazine-scribblers;
the 'smart' young leader-writers and critics; the half-hearted
performers on piano or violin who object to any innovation, and prefer
to grind on in the unemotional, coldly correct manner which they are
pleased to term the 'classical'--such persons exist, and will