ast, will boast the element of beauty which is
the one and only excuse for art's existence. I may not live to see
Meissonier's second dawn and I never want to see Sorolla's eclipse,
but you may. You have only to remember Turner's second high noon to be
assured of it.

* * * * *

And just here it might be well to consider this question of technic,
especially its value in obtaining the results desired. While it has
nothing to do with either selection, composition, or mass, it has, I
claim, much to do with the way a painter expresses himself--his tone
of voice, his handwriting, his gestures in talking, so to speak--and
therefore becomes an integral part of my discourse. It may also be of
service in the striking of a note of compromise, some middle ground
upon which the extremes may one day meet.

To make my point the clearer, let me recall an exhibition in New York,
held some years ago, when the bonnets were five deep trying to get a
glimpse of a picture of half a dozen red prelates who were listening
to a missionary's story. Many of these devotees went into raptures
over the brass nails in the sofa, and were only disappointed when they
could not read the monogram on the bishop's ring. Later on, a highly
cultivated and intelligent American citizen was so entranced that he
bought the missionary, story and all, for the price of a brown-stone
front, and carried him away that he might enjoy him forever.

One month later, almost exactly in the same spot hung another picture,
the subject of which I forget, or it may be that I did not understand
it or that it had no subject at all. If I remember, it was not like
anything in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters
under the earth. In this respect one could have fallen down and
worshipped it and escaped the charge of idolatry. With the exception
of a few stray art critics, delighted at an opportunity for a new
sensation, it was not surrounded by an idolatrous gathering at all. On
the contrary, the audience before it reminded me more of Artemas Ward
and his panorama.

"When I first exhibited this picture in New York," he said, "the
artists came with lanterns before daybreak to look at it, and then
they called for the artist, and when he appeared--they threw things at
him."

For one picture a gentleman gave a brown-stone front; for the other he
would not have given a single brick, unless he had been sure of
planting it in the midd