and to crown my sorrows, the statuary contract
had changed hands. The new contractor had a son of his own, or else a
nephew; and it was signified to me, with business-like plainness, that I
must find another market for my pigs. In the meanwhile I had given up my
room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where as I
read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the morning, that now
useless bulk, the Genius of Muskegon, was ever present to my eyes. Poor
stone lady! born to be enthroned under the gilded, echoing dome of the
new capitol, whither was she now to drift? for what base purposes be
ultimately broken up, like an unseaworthy ship? and what should befall
her ill-starred artificer, standing, with his thousand francs, on the
threshold of a life so hard as that of the unbefriended sculptor?

It was a subject often and earnestly debated by myself and Pinkerton.
In his opinion, I should instantly discard my profession. "Just drop it,
here and now," he would say. "Come back home with me, and let's throw
our whole soul into business. I have the capital; you bring the culture.
Dodd & Pinkerton--I never saw a better name for an advertisement; and
you can't think, Loudon, how much depends upon a name." On my side, I
would admit that a sculptor should possess one of three things--capital,
influence, or an energy only to be qualified as hellish. The first two
I had now lost; to the third I never had the smallest claim; and yet I
wanted the cowardice (or perhaps it was the courage) to turn my back
on my career without a fight. I told him, besides, that however poor
my chances were in sculpture, I was convinced they were yet worse in
business, for which I equally lacked taste and aptitude. But upon this
head, he was my father over again; assured me that I spoke in ignorance;
that any intelligent and cultured person was Bound to succeed; that I
must, besides, have inherited some of my father's fitness; and, at
any rate, that I had been regularly trained for that career in the
commercial college.

"Pinkerton," I said, "can't you understand that, as long as I was there,
I never took the smallest interest in any stricken thing? The whole
affair was poison to me."

"It's not possible," he would cry; "it can't be; you couldn't live in
the midst of it and not feel the charm; with all your poetry of soul,
you couldn't help! Loudon," he would go on, "you drive me crazy. You
expect a man to be all broken up abo