lips.  He belonged to the race of mortals, to be pitied or envied according as we view the matter, who are not held to a strict account for their aggressions.  Looking at him as he lay stretched in the shade, Rowland vaguely likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless, bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the tremulous delicacy of its structure, and be graceful even when they were most inconvenient.  Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke, listened to the gurgle of the river, and sniffed the balsam of the pines.  A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits, and brought the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river meadows.  He sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading view.  It seemed to him beautiful, and suddenly a strange feeling of prospective regret took possession of him.  Something seemed to tell him that later, in a foreign land, he would remember it lovingly and penitently.

“It ’s a wretched business,” he said, “this practical quarrel of ours with our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it.  Is one’s only safety then in flight?  This is an American day, an American landscape, an American atmosphere.  It certainly has its merits, and some day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy, I shall accuse myself of having slighted them.”

Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that America was good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it along.  He had evidently thought nothing whatever about it, and was launching his doctrine on the inspiration of the moment.  The doctrine expanded with the occasion, and he declared that he was above all an advocate for American art.  He did n’t see why we should n’t produce the greatest works in the world.  We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the biggest conceptions.  The biggest conceptions of course would bring forth in time the biggest performances.  We had only to be true to ourselves, to pitch in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our eyes upon our National Individuality.  “I declare,” he cried, “there ’s a career for a man, and I ’ve twenty minds to decide, on the spot, to embrace it—­to be the consummate, typical, original, national American artist!  It ’s inspiring!”

Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice better than his theory, and that a saner impulse than this had inspired his little Water-drinker.  Roderick took no offense, and three minutes afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme, but half heeded by his companion, who had returned to his cogitations.  At last Rowland delivered himself of the upshot of these.  “How would you like,” he suddenly demanded, “to go to Rome?”

Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our National Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it reasonably well.  “And I should like, by the same token,” he added, “to go to Athens, to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of Benares, where there is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall.”