steep, dark stairs, "Same old Dan," I thought. "Who
would imagine I was a stranger in New York looking up an old
fellow-struggler on his native heath? If I didn't know better, I might
fancy his tremendous success had given him the same opinion of himself
that America has of him. But no, nothing will change him; the same
furious devotion to his canvas once he has quietly planned his
picture, the same obstinate conviction that he is seeing something in
the only right way. And yet something _has_ changed him. Why has his
brush suddenly gone East? Why this new kind of composition crowded
with figures--ancient Jews, too? Has he been taken with piety, and is
he going henceforward ostentatiously to proclaim his race? And who is
the cheerful central figure with the fine, open face? I don't
recollect any such scene in Jewish history, or anything so joyous.
Perhaps it's a study of modern Jerusalem Jews, to show their life is
not all Wailing Wall and Jeremiah. Or perhaps it's only decorative.
America is great on decoration just now. No; he said the picture had a
meaning. Well, I shall know all about it to-night. Anyhow, it's a
beautiful thing."

"Same old Dan!" I thought even more decisively as, when I opened the
door of the little cafe, a burly, black-bearded figure with audacious
eyes came at me with a grip and a slap and a roar of welcome, and
dragged me to the quiet corner behind the billiard tables.

"I've just been opalizing your absinthe for you," he laughed, as we
sat down. "But what's the matter? You look kind o' scared."

"It's your Inferno of a city. As I turned the corner of Sixth Avenue,
an elevated train came shrieking and rumbling, and a swirl of wind
swept screeching round and round, enveloping me in a whirlpool of
smoke and steam, until, dazed and choked in what seemed the scalding
effervescence of a collision, I had given up all hope of ever learning
what your confounded picture meant."

"Aha!" He took a complacent sip. "It stayed with you, did it?" And the
light of triumph, flushing for an instant his rugged features, showed
when it waned how pale and drawn they were by the feverish tension of
his long day's work.

"Yes it did, old fellow," I said affectionately. "The joy and the glow
of it, and yet also some strange antique simplicity and restfulness
you have got into it, I know not how, have been with me all day,
comforting me in the midst of the tearing, grinding life of this
closing nineteenth century