unsets, blazing heat and cool,
transparent shadows, that cannot be visualized by it.

I hold, too, that by its use qualities can be obtained impossible to
be found in either etchings, lithographic crayon, wash, or pen and
ink--especially the velvet of its black.

Charcoal is the unhampered, the free, the personal individual medium.
No water, no oil, no palette, no squeezing of tubes or wiping of
tints; no scraping, scumbling, or other dilatory and exasperating
necessities. Just a piece of coal, the size of a cigarette, held flat
between the thumb and the forefinger, a sheet of paper, and then "let
go." Yes, one thing more--care must be taken to have this forefinger
fastened to a sure, knowing, and fearless hand, worked by an arm which
plays easily and loosely in a ball-socket set firmly near your
backbone. To carry out the metaphor, the steam of your enthusiasm,
kept in working order by the safety-valve of your experience, and
regulated by the ball-governor of your art knowledge--such as
composition, drawing, mass, light and dark--is then turned on.

Now you can "let go," and in the fullest sense, or you will never
arrive. My own experience has taught me that if an outdoor charcoal
sketch, covering and containing all a man can see--and he should
neither record nor explain anything more--is not completely finished
in two hours it cannot be finished by the same man in two days or two
years.

For a drawing in charcoal is really a record of a man's temperament.
It represents pre-eminently the personality of the individual--his
buoyancy, his perfect health, the quickness of his gestures. All these
are shown in the way he strikes his canvas--compelling it to talk back
to him. So also does it record the man's timidity, his want of
confidence in himself, his fear of spoiling what he has already done,
forgetting that a nickel will buy him another sheet of paper.

Courage, too, is a component part--not to be afraid to strike hard and
fast, belaboring the canvas as a pugilist belabors an opponent,
beating nature into shape.

[Illustration: The George and Vulture Inn, London]

As for the potterer and the niggler, the men and women whose stroke
goes no farther back than their knuckles, I may frankly say that
charcoal is not for them. The blow is a sledge blow going from the
spinal column, not the pitapat of a jeweller's hammer elaborating the
repousse around a goblet.

Remember, too, that the fight is all over in two hours