And then there is painting.  What a red rag is to a bull, Turner’s “Slave Ship” was to me, before I studied art.  Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I was ignorant.  His cultivation enables him—­and me, now—­to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him—­and me, now—­to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud—­I mean the water.  The most of the picture is a manifest impossibility—­that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie.  But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it.  A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.  In my then uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye.  Mr. Ruskin would have said:  This person is an ass.  That is what I would say, now. [1]

1.  Months after this was written, I happened into the National
    Gallery in London, and soon became so fascinated with the
    Turner pictures that I could hardly get away from the place. 
    I went there often, afterward, meaning to see the rest
    of the gallery, but the Turner spell was too strong;
    it could not be shaken off.  However, the Turners
    which attracted me most did not remind me of the Slave Ship.

However, our business in Baden-Baden this time, was to join our courier.  I had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by, and we did not know the language.  Neither did he.  We found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us.  I asked him if he was “all fixed.”  He said he was.  That was very true.  He had a trunk, two small satchels, and an umbrella.  I was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railway fares.  On the continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man.  Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging.  This seems a great saving to the tourist—­at first.  It does not occur to the tourist that somebody pays that man’s board and lodging.  It occurs to him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments.

CHAPTER XXV [Hunted by the Little Chamois]