my canvas child was a landscape. This afternoon it was an
inglorious smudge. It is now on its way back to the landscape condition,
and will have revived all its glories by to-morrow. It was noon when I
rang my bell.

'Madame,' I said to my landlady, in my cheerful Italian manner, 'will
you again extend to me your courtesy?'

My landlady is not an educated woman, but she is a good creature,
and has a delicate and refined susceptibility. She recognises in me
a gentleman. She reveres in my person a genius to which I make no
pretension. I am not a man of genius. A man of genius does one thing
supremely well. Some men of exceptional talent do many things admirably,
but nothing supremely well. I am a man of exceptional talent. Pardon the
modest candour which is compelled to assume the garb of egotism.

My landlady looked at my canvas child, and then at me, and laughed.

'To Mr. Aaron's, sir?' Asking this, she put her hands upon the edges of
the framework of the canvas.

'Yes, madame,' I answered, for we have always the same formula on
Fridays at noon. 'To my estimable uncle round the corner.'

'Anything more than usual?' my landlady asked me.

'No, madame,' I answered. 'A loaf, a pound of coffee, half a pound of
bird's-eye tobacco, the ticket from my estimable uncle, a receipt for
the week's rent, and the change.'

My landlady laughed again and said, 'Very good, sir.' Then she went
downstairs with the picture, and I felt unhappy when my canvas child was
gone, and was fain (an idiom employed by your best writers) to solace
myself with my violin. So far there was nothing to mark this Friday
morning from any other Friday morning for the last nine weeks. It is now
nine weeks that I have been a hermit. I was very hungry, and was glad to
think of the coffee and the loaf. I should have told you that my habits
are very abstemious, and that I am admirably healthy on a low diet.
My native cheerfulness, my piano, my violin, my violoncello, my canvas
children, and my pipes, all nourish me like meat and wine. I played
upon my violin a little impromptu good-bye to my landscape--a melodious
farewell to a sweet creation. The time seemed long before my landlady
returned, and when I put back my violin in its case, I heard a sound of
crying on the stairs. I opened the door and looked out, and there was
a little English angel, whom I had never before seen, sitting upon the
topmost step, close to my attic door, crying as if her heart had