tist, being on his favorite theme, took his
pipe out of his mouth for the first time, and spoke with warmth.) "Look
at that bit of desert, now. Does it not convey a perfect idea of
solitude and desolation?"

Marcus Wilkeson glanced at about ten feet of straight yellow paint
(which was all of the desert of Sahara not rolled up in the canvas), and
said that it did--which was perfectly true.

"There are one hundred feet more, which you don't see, just like it.
Another artist would have put in an oasis, or a stray hyena, or the
bleached bones of an unfortunate traveller. _I_ did not. Why? Another
would have worked up a sunset, or a moonrise, or a thunder storm, to
give variety to the sky. _I_ did not. Why? The sky over my desert is an
uninterrupted blue. There is not even a bird in it. There is nothing, in
short, either on the ground or in the air, to take away the mind of the
spectator, for one moment, from the sublime idea of a desert--an object
which, considered aesthetically, is one of the grandest in the universe.
This is severe simplicity. It is the highest school of Art."

"And the cheapest," observed Tiffles; "which is an important
consideration when you have an acre or two of canvas to paint. It would
cost a deal more to put in the sun and moon, travelling caravans, and
other objects of interest, here and there."

"Incidentally it may be the cheapest," said Patching. "But that is a
question for capitalists, and not for artists to determine. True Art
never thinks of the expense."

"It always seemed to me to be the easiest school of Art," said Marcus
Wilkeson. "I suppose, now, that you can dash off twenty or thirty rods
of this a day."

Patching smiled with a lofty pity. "So I can. Not because it is the
easiest, though--far from it; but because I happen to have a genius for
quick and sure touches. You, not being a professional artist, think the
execution of that scrap of desert and sky an easy matter. Perhaps you
fancy that you could do it." There was the least infusion of satire in
the artist's tone.

"Oh, no!" replied Marcus Wilkeson, who ever shrank from wounding the
self-love of a fellow creature. "I am not rash enough to suppose that I
could do it. I merely observed that it seemed--to my inexperienced
eyes--an easy matter. A few strokes of yellow paint here, for sand, and
a few strokes of blue paint there, for sky. But I am not even an
amateur, and so my opinion goes for nothing."

"I admire your frank