man experienced in the obliquities of human
nature, but never tolerant of these.

Teevan showed him pictures, the work of masters, piloting him through
galleries with instructive comment. Ewing instinctively felt the
accuracy of his taste, and divined the soundness of his technical
knowledge. Often he overlooked a blemish of bad drawing till Teevan
pointed it out. Often Teevan defined to his eye some masterly bit of
lining in a picture otherwise hopeless. And of color, that splendid
mystery, thing of trick and passion, the little man discoursed with rare
sanity.

After these provings of his expertness, Ewing was humble when Teevan
chose to point out the more striking deficiencies of his own work. If
Teevan made him feel that he must unlearn the vicious little he knew, he
performed the duty with a tact that left the youth as large with
gratitude as with discouragement. It was by Teevan's counsel that he
went to the school. The men of the Rookery tried to dissuade him from
that.

"They can't give you anything you haven't got," warned Baldwin. "And if
you don't act stubborn they may spoil what you have. You've learned your
A B C's, and they'll only tell you at the school to learn them another
way. They'll make you feel like a clumsy ass. Stay away."

Well-meant advice, but superficial, as Teevan observed when he heard of
it.

"Your friend confirms what I suspected," he went on, with a pleasant
glint in his eyes. "Those chaps would have you become a decent hack on
the pitiful facility you've already acquired. Pitiful, mark me, as
compared with your capacity. But I've learned to expect little in this
world of weak purpose. I dare say you won't endure it long at the
school. I grant you a fortnight there; then you'll tell me you give up."

He began his lessons at the League next day, fired with intent to
please his friend. He would fail, yes--fail seventy times seven, but he
would stand up.

He went, however, a little weighed down by the memory of his various
advisers. From the entrance he was directed above by an official-looking
person who yawned. Then he found himself in one of many cramped,
stall-like compartments, facing a plaster woman who crouched on one
knee. His position was between two youths who were annoyed by his
nearness. When he edged from the glowering of one the other nudged his
drawing board with an indignant elbow. There was no retreat, for the
students were packed closely about him. The one behind