e had at least his art to console him, and he remained true
to her in all those years of misery, and never degraded himself again to
"pot boiling." In hours of despair, he also tried his hand at it, but
simply "couldn't do it." Now and then he had a stroke of luck, a
moderate success, but popularity and fame would not come. His pictures
were steadily refused by the Academy. Every year he made a new effort,
but in vain.

One day, when one of his large pictures was exhibited in the show window
of a fashionable art store, a rich collector stepped out of his carriage
and, entering the store, asked, "How much do you want for the Inness you
have in the window?" The picture dealer answered, "It is no Inness, but
just as good a piece of work." "No Inness!" ejaculated the man who
wanted to buy a name, "then I don't want it," and abruptly left the
store. This event, trifling as it was, threw a pale halo over old
Melville's whole life and gave him strength to overcome many a severe
trial. He hoped on, persevering in his grim fight for existence, despite
failures and humiliation.

But the years passed by, and he still sat there in his studio, and in
its emptiness, its walls covered with his dark and unsold pictures,
whose tone seemed to grow darker with every year. He was one of those
sensitive beings who continually suffer from the harsh realities of
life, who are as naive as children, and therefore as easily
disillusionized, and nevertheless cannot renounce their belief in the
ideal. Not a day passed that he did not sit several hours before his
easel, trying to paint sunshine as it really is. Nobody in this busy
world, however, took notice of his efforts or comprehended the pathos of
old Melville's life, those fifty years of bad luck. And yet such
martyr-like devotion to art, such a glorious lifelong struggle against
fate and circumstances, is so rare in modern times that one might expect
the whole world to talk about it in astonished admiration.

And how did he manage to get along all this time, these twenty-five
years or more, since "pot boiling" had become an unpardonable crime to
him? Now and then he borrowed a dollar or so, that lasted him for quite
a while, as his wants were almost reduced to nothing. Of course he was
always behind in the rent, but as he sometimes sold a sketch, he managed
somehow to keep his studio. He did not eat more than once a day. "Too
much eating is of no use," he consoled himself, and in this resp