was—­all I had been trying for.  It was the kind of droring I knew ought to be, where a man sets down more what he feels than what he knows.  I knew I was beginning too late, but I loved that way of working.  I saw all the Corots I could, and began to paint as much as I could his way.  I got almost to have his eye, but of course I never got his hand.  Nobody could, I guess, not even an educated artist like you, or they’d all a don’ it.’

* * * * *

“After this awakening John Campbell began the artist’s life afresh with high hopes.  His first picture in the sweet new style was honestly called ‘Sunrise in Berkshire,’ though he had interwoven with his own reminiscences of the farm several motives from various compositions of his great exemplar.  He signed the canvas Campbell Corot, in the familiar capital letters, because he didn’t want to take all the credit; because he desired to mark emphatically the change in his manner, and because it struck him as a good painting name justified by the resemblance between his surname and the master’s Christian name.  It was a heartfelt homage in intention.  If the disciple had been familiar with Renaissance usages, he would undoubtedly have signed himself John of Camille.

“‘Sunrise in Berkshire’ fetched sixty dollars in a downtown auction room, the highest price John had ever received; but this was only the beginning of a bewildering rise in values.  When John next saw the picture, Campbell had been deftly removed, and the landscape, being favourably noticed in the press, brought seven hundred dollars in an uptown salesroom.  John happened on it again in Beilstein’s gallery, where the price had risen to thirteen hundred dollars—­a tidy sum for a small Corot in those early days.  At that figure it fell to a noted collector whose walls it still adorns.  Here Campbell Corot’s New England conscience asserted itself.  He insisted on seeing Beilstein in person and told him the facts.  Beilstein treated the visitor as an impostor and showed him the door, taking his address, however, and scornfully bidding him make good his story by painting a similar picture, unsigned.  For this, if it was worth anything, the dealer promised he should be liberally paid.  Naturally Campbell Corot’s professional dander was up, and he produced in a week a Corotish ‘Dance of Nymphs,’ if anything, more specious than the last.  For this Beilstein gave him twenty-five dollars, and within a month you might have seen it under the skylight of a country museum, where it is still reverently explained to successive generations of school-children.