ld like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a Gorilla,
that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

--A child,--yes, if you choose to call her so,--but such a child! Do you
know how Art brings all ages together?

There is no age to the angels and ideal human forms among which the
artist lives, and he shares their youth until his hand trembles and his
eye grows dim. The youthful painter talks of white-bearded Leonardo as
if he were a brother, and the veteran forgets that Raphael died at an
age to which his own is of patriarchal antiquity.

But why this lover of the beautiful should be so drawn to one whom
Nature has wronged so deeply seems hard to explain. Pity, I suppose.
They say that leads to love.

--I thought this matter over until I became excited and curious, and
determined to set myself more seriously at work to find out what was
going on in these wild hearts and where their passionate lives were
drifting. I say wild hearts and passionate lives, because I think I can
look through this seeming calmness of youth and this apparent feebleness
of organization, and see that Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat, is
only waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, knowing that all is in
readiness and the slow-match burning quietly down to the powder. He will
leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of itself.

One need not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house
and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is
on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud,
but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible.
There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting
shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings
one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on.--Oh,--oh,--oh! do
you know what has got hold of you? It is the great red dragon that is
born of the little red eggs we call _sparks_, with his hundred blowing
red manes, and his thousand lashing red tails, and his multitudinous red
eyes glaring at every crack and key-hole, and his countless red tongues
lapping the beams he is going to crunch presently, and his hot breath
warping the panels and cracking the glass and making old timber sweat
that had forgotten it was ever alive with sap. Run for your life! leap!
or you will be a cinder in five minutes, that nothing but a coroner
would take for the wre