ut to her father, with her
parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the
canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend
from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the
paint was not dry!

She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this
little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take
a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio.

Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man:

This was apparent at sight.

That he was an uneducated man:

This asserted itself to the eyes and ears.

After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various
subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer,
made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole
done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain,
straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his
man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his
action and style.

Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate'
himself--he meant self-instruct--and having a retentive memory, and a
not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the
humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be
found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent
state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one
half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth.
Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who
undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely
checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and
subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was--undisciplined: a raw recruit,
not a soldier.

Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the
self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about
paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him
loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and
his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any
of your 'old masters'! _I_ ought to know!' Or, '_I_ am an uneducated
man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion:
'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all
education is worthless, except self-education.'

Unfortu