but here the people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not good.  Only one thing seems certain.  There is a notice on a shut door, in the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again.  So all the work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened.  It is a very sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be as sad ones the world over.  Let it be written, however, that of the sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or whimpered, or broke down.  There was no chance of fighting.  It was bitter defeat, but they took it standing.

HALF-A-DOZEN PICTURES

‘Some men when they grow rich, store pictures in a gallery,’ Living, their friends envy them, and after death the genuineness of the collection is disputed under the dispersing hammer.

A better way is to spread your picture over all earth; visiting them as Fate allows.  Then none can steal or deface, nor any reverse of fortune force a sale; sunshine and tempest warm and ventilate the gallery for nothing, and—­in spite of all that has been said of her crudeness—­Nature is not altogether a bad frame-maker.  The knowledge that you may never live to see an especial treasure twice teaches the eyes to see quickly while the light lasts; and the possession of such a gallery breeds a very fine contempt for painted shows and the smeary things that are called pictures.

In the North Pacific, to the right hand as you go westward, hangs a small study of no particular value as compared with some others.  The mist is down on an oily stretch of washed-out sea; through the mist the bats-wings of a sealing schooner are just indicated.  In the foreground, all but leaping out of the frame, an open rowboat, painted the rawest blue and white, rides up over the shoulder of a swell.  A man in blood-red jersey and long boots, all shining with moisture, stands at the bows holding up the carcase of a silver-bellied sea-otter from whose pelt the wet drips in moonstones.  Now the artist who could paint the silver wash of the mist, the wriggling treacly reflection of the boat, and the raw red wrists of the man would be something of a workman.

But my gallery is in no danger of being copied at present.  Three years since, I met an artist in the stony bed of a brook, between a line of 300 graven, lichened godlings and a flaming bank of azaleas, swearing horribly.  He had been trying to paint one of my pictures—­nothing more than a big water-worn rock tufted with flowers and a snow-capped hill for background.  Most naturally he failed, because there happened to be absolutely no perspective in the thing, and he was pulling the lines about to make some for home consumption.  No man can put the contents of a gallon jar into a pint mug.  The protests of all uncomfortably-crowded mugs since the world began have settled that long ago, and have given us the working theories, devised by imperfect instruments for imperfect instruments, which are called Rules of Art.