These are they who give their goods to the poor, their bodies to be burned; but are each day ungracious, unloving, hard, cruel to men and women about them.  These are they also who make bad statues, bad pictures, invent frightful fashions of things to be worn, and make the houses and the rooms in which they live hideous with unsightly adornments.  The centuries fight such,—­now with a Titian, a Michel Angelo; now with a great philanthropist, who is also peaceable and easy to be entreated; now with a Florence Nightingale, knowing no sect; now with a little child by a roadside, holding up a marigold in the sun; now with a sweet-faced old woman, dying gracefully in some almshouse.  Who has not heard voice from such apostles?

To-day my nearest, most eloquent apostle of beauty is a poor shoemaker, who lives in the house where I lodge.  How poor he must be I dare not even try to understand.  He has six children:  the oldest not more than thirteen, the third a deaf-mute, the baby puny and ill,—­sure, I think (and hope), to die soon.

They live in two rooms, on the ground-floor.  His shop is the right-hand corner of the front room; the rest is bedroom and sitting-room; behind are the bedroom and kitchen.  I have never seen so much as I might of their way of living; for I stand before his window with more reverent fear of intruding by a look than I should have at the door of a king’s chamber.  A narrow rough ledge added to the window-sill is his bench.  Behind this he sits from six in the morning till seven at night, bent over, sewing slowly and painfully on the coarsest shoes.  His face looks old enough for sixty years; but he cannot be so old.  Yet he wears glasses and walks feebly; he has probably never had in any one day of his life enough to eat.  But I do not know any man, and I know only one woman, who has such a look of radiant good-cheer and content as has this poor shoemaker, Anton Grasl.

In his window are coarse wooden boxes, in which are growing the common mallows.  They are just now in full bloom,—­row upon row of gay-striped purple and white bells.  The window looks to the east, and is never shut.  When I go out to my breakfast the sun is streaming in on the flowers and Anton’s face.  He looks up, smiles, bows low, and says, “Good-day, good my lady,” sometimes holding the mallow-stalks back with one hand, to see me more plainly.  I feel as if the day and I had had benediction.  It is always a better day because Anton has said it is good; and I am a better woman for sight of his godly contentment.  Almost every day he has beside the mallows in the boxes a white mug with flowers in it,—­nasturtiums, perhaps, or a few pinks.  This he sets carefully in shade of the thickest mallows; and this I have often seen him hold down tenderly, for the little ones to see and to smell.