“Twenty-five minutes is a long time to search for a bit of such small circumference.  Thank you.  Do you go to the Deacon’s?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.”

We walked on together in silence, till we reached our journey’s end,—­I too tired, he too reserved, too preoccupied, or too shy, to speak again; but when, at last, we were seated with our cigars on the Deacon’s door-step, he turned suddenly to me and asked,—­

“Are you fond of the country?”

“Why, yes!  What else is there?” I answered, laughing.

“Ah, you are an artist!”

“I hope to be one.”

“Its a bad business,” said he, testily,—­“a very bad business.  If I were you, I would give it up.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

“Tried it?” he ejaculated, kicking the gravel-walk,—­“yes, and everything else, I believe.  If I thought it would do you any good, I would give you the benefit of my experience; but you’d only laugh, and make a good story of it to your wife.”

“Alas!  I have no such incumbrance.”

“The worse for you, if you have genius and the modesty of genius.  A true artist, who seeks to interpret Nature in its purest and most exquisite relations, who penetrates the deepest temples of the woods and the silent sanctuaries of the mountains, must be a true, pure, and good man.  He must be a happy man,—­happy in a sweet and natural way.  A man whose life is passed in a daily delight that gently stirs without feverish excitement will be tender and most lovely to women.  He ought to marry.”

“Did you ever write poetry?” I asked.

“I began to compose when I was six years old.  I wrote a poem on the sea, commencing,—­

  ’O thou earthly sea,
  Every person thinks of thee,—­
  The sailor, and the busy bee,
  And the Chinese drinking tea!’

I thought it very fine.  I have written many things since then, and they seemed good to me at the time.  I would not venture to say how they struck others.”

He smiled pleasantly.

“Do not be frightened by the shadow of a possible wife from unfolding your history,” said I.  “Chance has thrown us together; befriend me with your experience.”

“Take warning, then, if need be.

“In college I was thought ‘a very able fellow,’ one ’who held the pen of a ready writer’; and I graduated as vain of my supposed talents as a young miss of her first conquest.

“My earliest literary essay was in a new magazine, which, as it was just rising into notice, would be, I imagined, greatly assisted by my condescension.  It was a charity, indeed, to give my support to this fledgling, and I sent to it a long article, entitled, ’The Cultivated, as Moving and Educational Powers.’  My manuscripts were returned, with this quiet bit of advice:—­’Before “X.Y.Z.” institutes any other reforms, we would advise him to reperuse his English Grammar.’  Far from having a salutary effect, this rebuff only rankled in my soul.  I determined to revenge myself on the paltry malignant who dared to despise my efforts.  I therefore wrote a slashing criticism for one of the evening papers, demolishing (as I thought) the delinquent periodical, and denouncing its whole corps of writers as frivolous and almost illiterate.  My satire was returned, being too personal for publication.