nowles; he showed how Joe Jefferson
played Rip Van Winkle, how Sol Smith Russell did "A Poor Relation."

And all through his soul and body, as he watched his haphazard audience
follow him in his moods and changes, ran the quiet magic of Art
Satisfied. It is a noble braggart madness, this glorification of a cheap
art by an old actor.

"Barnes, my boy," he said to himself, with a glow of rapid blood, "you
have not lost them yet! See them laugh with you! Feel them cry! What
does it matter if you eat watery oatmeal and live in a skylight room;
are you not an artist, a resonant instrument of poetry and music and
mirth, a true actor of the best parts? You are; and these are matters of
the undying soul. A boarding-house is a vulgar, temporal thing. You were
right to come here to-night, and do this thing without pay, for Art's
sake. You uphold the honor of a calling which is founded upon Art. And,
oh, most of all, you have not lost your power, you have not outlived
your time! Sanderson intimated that you were a dead one--very well,
to-morrow you shall triumphantly cut the acquaintance of Sanderson! To
have lived until this evening before the youth of this land; to have
caught the right intonation, the proper gesture; to have swept through
the hearts of your hearers like a vibration of music--this is to have
transcended, this is to have justified yourself! And justified yourself
to whom? To Sanderson? To the world? No! You have justified Harry Barnes
to Harry Barnes! You carry this human throng over the footlights and
into your soul with a Chinaman's queue and a putty nose. Your Art is
still that fine, secure Art which you have carried in your memory as you
traversed dingy stairways on Fourteenth Street. Barnes, you live, you
act, you accomplish! Bravo!"

He shook hands abstractedly all around when the affair came to a close.
He remembered bundling his make-up and trinkets into a piece of
newspaper and tucking it under his arm. A pleased face presented itself
at one time before his eyes and a voice said, confidentially, "Mr.
Barnes, I congratulate you; and the dramatic critic of the _Star_ was
here to-night."

He found himself at last out in the cool darkness of the street, and he
had to stop a moment to think which way his boarding-house lay. Then he
walked home, to save carfare. All the way up the silent streets his
brain sang with triumph. His blood jumped in gladness; he could hardly
keep from running. He declaimed aloud