so bring him wealth!--Perhaps, of all the contradictions
about this youth, the oddest was that, to those who knew him, his most
salient characteristic appeared to be, not one of his many weaknesses,
but his single, undying strength. Possibly, however, the explanation lay
in the fact, that Joseph himself did not realize the extent of his baser
nature. As yet his many thorns had in no wise hurt the single blossom.
All his weaknesses could not hide his strength. A little more, indeed,
and this strength might have grown till it hid all the rest, and formed
a safe refuge for him from himself.--Ah! Had that but been
possible!--How many geniuses have, indeed, come into the world only to
go out of it unfamed, unsuspected? How many have dropped down to hell
through the pitfalls of their own creation, and so been lost forever to
the world? Good God! How pitiful it is!--Turn we away.

Joseph Kashkarin had many a plaint for his unfortunate lot. But the one
which came to tongue oftener than any other, was that which proclaimed
the red fires of the artist-flesh to burn within him, while he bemoaned
the fact that he had never yet found a woman worthy of his devotion.
Loudly did he bewail his over-fastidiousness; in which, nevertheless, he
secretly glorified. But now for so long had he mourned his loveless
estate, that, since of all the subjects of his brush woman was most
congenial to him, he had gradually come to lay every fault of his work,
crudeness of coloring, hardness of line, harshness of texture, finally,
his very conventionality of conception, to the door of his ignorance of
the grand passion, in which he expected to attain to his final
development. In the end, as might have been expected, Fate, wearying of
his everlasting complaint, became suddenly impatient, and set about
granting his desire with diabolical fulness.

Joseph's peasant-girl took a mention, but no prize. Chilled by this and
by the unaccountable failure of either picture to sell, he laid away,
for the hour, his dreams of folly, and worked through the winter
steadfastly. At length, however, the gray cold wore itself away; and,
with the breath of the new spring, there came for Joseph desire
fulfilled, and an end of steadfastness for the rest of his life.

Endless as the Russian winter seems, there does, at length, when hope is
dormant, come that quickening of nature when the green steppes break
through snowy coverlets, when swelling buds burst the last, thin
ic