at is not pleasure.

The training of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual;
springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things
first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once,
even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching
this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try
some simple scheme from the things of Nature. Hyacinths look well with
their leaves: therefore _that_ green and _that_ blue, with the white of
April clouds and the black of the tree-stems in the wood are colours that
can be used together.

You must be prepared to find almost a sort of penalty in this habit of
looking at everything with the eye of a stained-glass artist. One seems
after a time to see natural objects with numbers attached to them
corresponding with the numbers of one's glasses in the racks:
butterflies flying about labelled "No. 50, deep," or "75_a_, pale," or a
bit of "123, special streaky" in the sunset. But if one does not obtrude
this so as to bore one's friends, the little personal discomfort, if it
exists, is a very small price to pay for the delight of living in this
glorious fairyland of colour.

Do not think it beneath your dignity or as if you were shirking some
vital artistic obligation, to take hints from these natural objects, or
from ancient or modern glass, in a perfectly frank and simple manner;
nay, even to match your whole colour scheme, tint for tint, by them if
it seems well to you. You may get help anywhere and from anything, and
as much as you like; it will only be so much more chance for you; so
much richer a store to choose from, so much stronger resource to guide
to good end; for after all, with all the helps you can get, much lies in
the doing. Do what you like then--as a child: but be sure you _do_ like
it: and if the window wants a bit of any particular tint, put it there,
meaning or no meaning. If there is no robe or other feature to excuse
and account for it in the spot which seems to crave for it,--put the
colour in, anywhere and anyhow--in the background if need be--a sudden
orange or ruby "quarry" or bit of a quarry, as if the thing were done in
purest waywardness. "You would like a bit there if there were an excuse
for it?" Then there _is_ an excuse--the best of all--that the eye
demands it. Do it fearlessly.

But to work in this way (it hardly need be said) you must watch and work
at your glass yours