Puslapio vaizdai
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see if he could n't round up his countrywoman. But Harshaw rather haughtily resigned-in favor of a better man, he said. Then Tom stood up in the wagon and gave the camp call, «Yee-ee-ip! yee-ip, ye-ip!» a brazen, barbarous hoot. Kitty clapped both hands to her ears when she was first introduced to it, but it did not fetch her now. Tom «yee-iped » again, and as we listened there she was, strolling toward us through the greasewood, with the face of a May morning! She would n't give us the satisfaction of seeing her run, but her flushed cheeks, damp temples, and quick, sighing breath betrayed her. She had been running fast enough.

<< Kitty," I said severely, «there are rattlesnakes among those rocks.>>

« Are there?» she answered serenely. «<But I was n't looking for rattlesnakes, you know. See what lovely things I did find! I've got the prospecting fever already.»

She had filled her pockets with specimens of obsidian, jaspers, and chalcedonies, of colors most beautiful, with a deep-dyed opaqueness, a shell-fracture, and a silken polish like jade. And she consulted us about them very prettily-the little fraud! Of course she was instantly forgiven.

But I notice that since our arrival at Broadlands Harshaw has not troubled her with his attentions. They might be the most indifferent strangers, for all that his manner implies. And if she is not pleased with the change, she ought to be, for she has made her wishes plain.

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Mary Hallock Foote.

<< What said he that you seem so sad, O fisher of the sea?

(Alack! I know it was my love, Who fain would speak to me!) »

«He said, Beware a woman's mouth

A rose that bears a thorn.>>>

« Ah, me! these lips shall smile no more That gave my lover scorn.»>

«He said, Beware a woman's eyes.

They pierce you with their death.>>

«Then falling tears shall make them blind

That robbed my dear of breath.>>

«He said, Beware a woman's hairA serpent's coil of gold.>>>

<< Then will I shear the cruel locks That crushed him in their fold.»

«He said, Beware a woman's heart
As you would shun the reef.>>>
«So let it break within my breast,
And perish of my grief.>>

«He raised his hands; a woman's name Thrice bitterly he cried:

My net had parted with the strain;
He vanished in the tide.»

«A woman's name! What name but mine,
O fisher of the sea?»

« A woman's name, but not your name,
Poor maiden Marjorie.»

Dora Sigerson.

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WE

IN BOHEMIA WITH DU MAURIER. RECOLLECTIONS OF ARTIST LIFE IN THE FIFTIES.

WITH SKETCHES BY DU MAURIER.

E first met in Antwerp, in the classrooms of the famous academy. I was painting and blaguing, as one paints and blagues in the storm-and-stress period of one's artistic development. It had been my good fortune to begin my studies in Paris, where, in the Atelier Gleyre, I had cultivated the essentially French art of chaffing, known by the name of «la blague parisienne,» and I now was able to give my less lively Flemish friends and fellow-students the full benefit of my experience. Many pleasant recollections bound me to Paris, so when I heard one day that a «nouveau » had arrived straight from my old Atelier Gleyre I was not a little impatient to make his acquaintance.

VOL. LII.-14-15.

The newcomer was Du Maurier. I sought him out, and, taking it for granted that he was a Frenchman, I addressed him in French. We were soon engaged in lively conversation, asking and answering questions about comrades in Paris, and sorting the threads that associated us both with the same place. «Did you know un nommé Poynter?» he asked, exquisitely Frenchifying the name for my benefit. I mentally translated this into equally exquisite English, my version naturally being "a man called Poynter.» Later on an American came up, with whom I exchanged a few words in his and my native tongue. «What the deuce are you? English? » broke in Du Maurier. «And what the deuce are you?» I re

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joined. And we then and there made friends on a sound international basis.

It seemed to me that at this first meeting Du Maurier took me in at a glance-the eager, hungry glance of the caricaturist. He seemed struck with my appearance, as well he might be. I wore a workman's blouse that had gradually taken its color from its surroundings. To protect myself from the indiscretions of my comrades I had painted various warnings on my back, as, for instance, «Bill-stickers, beware!» «It is forbidden to shoot rubbish here,» and the like. My very black hair, ever inclined to run riot, was encircled by a craftily conceived band of crochet-work, such as only a fond mother's hand could devise, and I was doubtless coloring some meerschaum of eccentric design.

It has always been a source of legitimate pride to me to think that I should have been the tool selected by Providence to sharpen Du Maurier's pencil. There must have been something in my « verfluchte Physiognomie,» as a very handsome young German whom I used to chaff unmercifully called it, to reveal to Du Maurier those dormant capacities which had been betrayed in his eager glance. This was, I believe, in 1857. Not feeling over sure as regards that date, I refer to a bundle of Du Maurier's letters before me, but they offer me no assistance. There is but one dated, and that one merely headed, « Düsseldorf, 19th Cent.» Well, in 1857 then, let us take it, the Antwerp Academy was under the direction of De Keyser, that most urbane of men and painters. Van Lerius, well known to many American and English lovers of art, her Majesty included, was professor of the painting class, and among the students there were many who rapidly made themselves a name as Tadema, M. Maris, Neuhuys, Huysmans, and the armless artist whose foot-painted copies after the masters in the Antwerp gallery are well known to every tourist. The teaching was of a sound, practical nature, strongly imbued with the tendencies of the colorist school. Antwerp ever sought to uphold the traditions of a great past. In the Atelier Gleyre you might have studied form and learned to fill it with color, but here you would be taught to manipulate color and to limit it by form. A peculiar kind of artistic kicks and cuffs was administered to the student by Van Lerius as he went his rounds. "That is a charming bit of color you have painted in that forehead,» he said to me on one occasion; «so delicate and refined. Do it again,» he added, as he took up my paletteknife and scraped off the «delicate bit.» «Ah,

you see, savez-vous, you can't do it again; you got it by fluke-some stray tints off your palette, savez-vous?» And taking the biggest brush I had, he swept over that palette and produced enough of the desired tints to cover a dozen foreheads.

The comrade without arms was a most assiduous worker. It was amusing to watch his mittened feet step out of their shoes and at the shortest notice proceed to do duty as hands. His nimble toes would screw and unscrew the tops of the color-tubes, or handle the brush, as steadily as the best and deftest of fingers could handle it. Very much unlike any of us, he was most punctilious in the care he bestowed on his paint-box, as also on his personal appearance.

Du Maurier was soon installed in the painting class, and made a vigorous start. I particularly recollect a life-size, full-length painting of an old woman and a boy, a penand-ink drawing of which is in my father's album (see page 105), that showed talent enough and to spare; but his artistic aspirations were soon to meet with a serious check. His eyesight began to give him trouble, and before long put a stop to his studies in atelier or academy. He was not to become a painter, as he had fondly hoped, but, as we now know, was to work out his destiny in another direction.

In those days we called all that caricaturing, and caricature he certainly did, mainly of me and himself. From the first he imagined he saw a marked contrast between us. His nose was supposed to be turned up and mine down, whereas really neither his nor mine much deviates from the ordinary run of noses; my lower lip certainly does project, but his does not particularly recede. But the imaginary contrast inspired him in the earliest days of our acquaintance, and started him on the war-path of pen and ink. He drew us in all conceivable and in some inconceivable situations. «Moscheles and I,» he says on one page, «if we were artistically beautiful » ; then again, if we were of the fair sex, or soldiers, or, by way of showing our versatility, if we were horses.» In that page he seems to have focused the essence of our characteristics while appearing only to delineate our human and equine possibilities.

In consequence of the growing trouble with his eyes, Du Maurier left Antwerp for Mechlin, to place himself under the care of an eminent oculist who resided within easy reach of that city. In those days railway traveling was not as rapid as it is now, but one could get from Antwerp to Mechlin in about an hour, a cir

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cumstance which I frequently turned to account. Du Maurier's mother had come to live with him, his sister joining them for a short time, and the home in quiet old Mechlin soon. became a sort of haven of rest. I spent many a happy day and night there, on which occasions I am bound to say that the piano, requisitioned by me for some special purposes of musical caricature, detracted somewhat from the restfulness of the haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented: my qualifications as a basso profondo or a brass-bandsman were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the

(How Du Maurier came by the name of «Rag» and I by that of «Bobtail » I must tell later on.) Then follow the words:

M. & I, IF WE WERE OF THE FAIR SEX.>>

ladies, and my high soprano reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that, I never attempted Chopin's « Impromptu.»)

Then Du Maurier would sing the French "romance » or the English song, or he would "dire la chansonnette»; and what with his sympathetic tenor and his intuitive knowledge of music he seemed to be able to express more than many who had had the advantage of a musical training. A few old letters of his remind me that we were audacious enough to write verses and music, he doing the former, I the latter.

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CHANSON.

(D'après un barde Britannique.) 1

Les sources vont à la rivière,

Et la rivière à l'océan; Les monts embrassent la lumière, Le vent du ciel se mêle au vent; Contre le flot, le flot se presse;

Rien ne vit seul; tout semble ici, Se fondre en la commune ivresseEt pourquoi pas nous deux aussi?

Vois le soleil étreint la terre, Qui rougit d'aise à son coucher;

La lune étreint les flots qu'éclaire

Son rayon doux comme un baiser;

Les moindres fleurs ont des tendresses

Pour leurs pareilles d'ici

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bas,

Que valent toutes ces ca

resses

Si tu ne me caresses pas?

Soon afterward he sends me another poetical effusion, and writes:

DEAR BOBTAIL: I send you the serenade composed tant bien que mal last night, not "entre la poire et le fromage,» but between the tea and the pears. I am afraid you will not find it as dramatic as you wished, but I don't feel it otherwise, and as Mahomet can't write words to the mountain's music, the mountain must try and adapt its music to the verses of Mahomet.

SÉRÉNADE APRÈS LA SIESTE.

Berthe aux grands yeux d'asur, ouvre donc ta paupière,

Ils sont là, nos amis; cêde à notre prière.
Chasse les rêves d'or de ton léger sommeil -
Le trône préparé n'attend que ton réveil;
Le soleil a cessé de régner sur la terre;
Viens régner sur la fête et sois notre soleil.
Réponds à nos accords par des accents plus doux.
Au jardin des Amours viens, oh! viens, avec nous!
Au jardin des Amours ta place est réservée
Parmi des feux de joie et des lilas en fleurs.
Viens réveiller en nous de nouvelles ardeurs;
Descends avec la nuit, ainsi que la rosée.
Tant que l'astre d'argent sourit à la vallée,
Toi bel astre d'amour, viens sourire à nos cœurs!
1 See Shelley's Love's Philosophy.»>

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CARISSIMO: In vain have I taxed Rag's inventive powers to alter the last stanza; we must e'en stick to « Ce baiser-la.» The lines I have underlined mean that I don't quite approve the part of the music that comes just there, as in the musical phrase you have set to it I fancy there is a want of tenderness. All the rest is stunning; the more I hums it the more I likes it, but I can't exactly come your accompaniment.

No wonder, for my accompaniments were usually rather indefinite quantities, subject to the mood of the moment. «Moscheles or Mephistopheles, which?» he asks, as he depicts me at the piano, perhaps evolving some such accompaniment from the depths of «untrained inner consciousness.» Another draw

ing there is, of a somewhat later period, which

he calls Inspiration Papillotique.» Again I am at the piano, my eyes raised to the << she >>

in curl-papers who floats as a vision in the clouds issuing from my ever-puffing cigar, while at my feet is stretched the meditative form of my friend, and under them is crushed some work of our immortal colleague Beethoven.

And who was «she» thus to inspire us? On the supposition that most people are, like myself, interested in the «shes » that can inspire, I may permit myself to say something about the attractive young lady who was able to lead us by easy stages from the vague << inspiration papillotique» to an admiration which might be said to culminate in flirtation. I don't remember that either of us ever tried to cut the other out. We rather shared fraternally in the enjoyment of her good graces.

These occasions were productive of a great number of drawings and sketches illustrating our little adventures, and all plainly showing that the incidents recorded occurred to us at that pleasant time of life when bright illusions and buoyant spirits lead the way, and when sorrow itself has more of the rose-color than many a rose of a later day.

Mechlin was, and perhaps is still, a dull, deserted city, at best up to the date of the last

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