etter many years later where he got his philosophy replied
"from York Powell" and thereon added, no doubt remembering that Powell was
without ideas, "by looking at him." Then there was a good listener, a
painter in whose hall hung a big picture painted in his student days of
Ulysses sailing home from the Phaeacian court, an orange and a skin of
wine at his side, blue mountains towering behind; but who lived by drawing
domestic scenes and lovers' meetings for a weekly magazine that had an
immense circulation among the imperfectly educated. To escape the boredom
of work, which he never turned to but under pressure of necessity and
usually late at night, with the publisher's messenger in the hall, he had
half-filled his studio with mechanical toys, of his own invention, and
perpetually increased their number. A model railway train at intervals
puffed its way along the walls, passing several railway stations and
signal boxes; and on the floor lay a camp with attacking and defending
soldiers and a fortification that blew up when the attackers fired a pea
through a certain window; while a large model of a Thames barge hung from
the ceiling. Opposite our house lived an old artist who worked also for
the illustrated papers for a living, but painted landscapes for his
pleasure, and of him I remember nothing except that he had outlived
ambition, was a good listener, and that my father explained his gaunt
appearance by his descent from Pocahontas. If all these men were a little
like becalmed ships, there was certainly one man whose sails were full.
Three or four doors off on our side of the road lived a decorative artist
in all the naive confidence of popular ideals and the public approval. He
was our daily comedy. "I myself and Sir Frederick Leighton are the
greatest decorative artists of the age," was among his sayings, and a
great Lych-gate, bought from some country church-yard, reared its thatched
roof, meant to shelter bearers and coffin, above the entrance to his front
garden to show that he at any rate knew nothing of discouragement. In this
fairly numerous company--there were others though no other face rises
before me--my father and York Powell found listeners for a conversation
that had no special loyalties, or antagonisms; while I could only talk
upon set topics, being in the heat of my youth, and the topics that filled
me with excitement were never spoken of.

IV

Bedford Park had a red brick clubhouse with a little