e gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you
came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in
glass globes--yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five
forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There
were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets
dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened
fish kicked up showers of little pearls with their tails. The children
carried lanterns in the shape of small red paper fish bobbing at the end
of slivers of bamboo, and these drifted through the crowd like a strayed
constellation of baby stars. When the children stood at the edge of a
canal and called down to unseen friends in boats the pink lights were
all reflected orderly below. The light of the thousand small lights in
the street went straight up into the darkness among the interlacing
telegraph wires, and just at the edge of the shining haze, on a sort of
pigeon-trap, forty feet above ground, sat a Japanese fireman, wrapped up
in his cloak, keeping watch against fires. He looked unpleasantly like a
Bulgarian atrocity or a Burmese 'deviation from the laws of humanity,'
being very still and all huddled up in his roost. That was a superb
picture and it arranged itself to admiration. Now, disregarding these
things and others--wonders and miracles all--men are content to sit in
studios and, by light that is not light, to fake subjects from pots and
pans and rags and bricks that are called 'pieces of colour.' Their
collection of rubbish costs in the end quite as much as a ticket, a
first-class one, to new worlds where the 'props' are given away with the
sunshine. To do anything because it is, or may not be, new on the market
is wickedness that carries its own punishment; but surely there must be
things in this world paintable other and beyond those that lie between
the North Cape, say, and Algiers. For the sake of the pictures, putting
aside the dear delight of the gamble, it might be worth while to
venture out a little beyond the regular circle of subjects and--see what
happens. If a man can draw one thing, it has been said, he can draw
anything. At the most he can but fail, and there are several matters in
the world worse than failure. Betting on a certainty, for instance, or
playing with nicked cards is immoral, and secures expulsion from clubs.
Keeping deliberately to one set line of work because you know you can do