. Mr.
Patching's individuality lay chiefly in his hat.

The artist placed a moist hand, with one long finger nail like a claw,
at the disposal of Marcus Wilkeson. The latter gentleman shook the
member feebly, and distinctly felt the sharp edge of the long finger
nail in his palm. It was an unpleasant sensation.

"Happy to meet a _confidential_ friend of Tiffles's," said Patching.
"Painting panoramas is not exactly what I have been used to. An artist's
reputation is his capital in trade, you know." He spoke slowly and
languidly, as if hope and happiness were quite dead within him, and he
had consented to live on only for the good of high Art.

"I understand," said Marcus. "The secret shall be inviolate."

"Nothing but my old friendship for Tiffles here could possibly have
induced me to undertake the job. My enemies--and I have them, ha! ha!"
(he said this bitterly)--"would like nothing better to say of Patching,
than that he had got down to the panorama line of business. It would be
a pretty piece of scandal."

"My lips are sealed, sir. But it strikes me, as a casual observer, that
there is nothing to be ashamed of in this beautiful work of art." Marcus
Wilkeson had the amiable vice of flattery.

Patching shrugged his shoulders, and made a contemptuous gesture toward
the canvas with his outstretched brush. "A mere daub," said he. "One
step higher than painting a barn or a board fence--that's all."

"Yet the true artist adorns what he touches," said Marcus.

Patching accepted the homage calmly, as one who knew that he deserved
it. "A very just and discriminating remark, sir. I have no doubt that a
person thoroughly familiar with my style would say, looking at this
panorama, 'It has the severe simplicity of a Patching.' I consented to
paint it, as Tiffles well remembers, only on condition that I should not
wholly abase myself by abandoning the style upon which I have built up
my reputation."

Tiffles, thus appealed to, corroborated the statement with a solemn bow.

The artist continued: "Fortunately, the subject is one peculiarly
adapted to my genius. For instance: the desert of Sahara is a dead level
of sand. It is a perfect type of severe simplicity in the highest sense.
It exhibits no common display of gorgeous colors, such as poor artists
and the ignorant crowd rejoice in. As far as the eye can see, there is a
serene stretch of yellow sand, without even a blade of grass to break
its awful immensity." (The ar