dex of your enjoyment.

Now you are ready. You loosen your cravat, hang your coat to some
rustic peg in the creviced bark of the tree behind, seize a bit of
charcoal from your bag, sweep your eye around, and dash in a few
guiding strokes. Above is a changing sky filled with crisp white
clouds; behind you, the great trunks of the many branched willows; and
away off, under the hot sun, the yellow-green of the wasted pasture,
dotted with patches of rock and weeds, and hemmed in by the low hills
that slope to the curving stream.

It is high noon! There is a stillness in the air that impresses you,
broken only by the low murmur of the brook behind and the ceaseless
song of the grasshopper among the weeds in front. A tired bumblebee
hums past, rolls lazily over a clover blossom at your feet, and has
his midday lunch. Under the maples near the river's bend stand a group
of horses, their heads touching. In the brook below are the patient
cattle, with patches of sunlight gilding and bronzing their backs and
sides. Every now and then a breath of cool air starts out from some
shaded retreat, plays around your forehead, and passes on. All nature
rests. It is her noontime.

But you work on: an enthusiasm has taken possession of you; the paints
mix too slowly; you use your thumb, smearing and blending with a bit
of rag--anything for the effect. One moment you are glued to your
seat, your eyes riveted on your canvas; the next, you are up and
backing away, taking it in as a whole, then pouncing down upon it
quickly, belaboring it with your brush. Soon the trees take shape; the
sky forms become definite; the meadow lies flat and loses itself in
the fringe of willows.

When all of this begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and some
lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf,
or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a
tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your veins
that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life will ever do. The
reaction comes the next day when, in the cold light of your studio,
you see how far short you have come and how crude and false is your
best touch compared with the glory of the landscape in your mind and
heart. But the thrill that it gave you will linger forever!

Or come with me to Constantinople and let us study its palaces and
mosques, its marvellous stuffs, its romantic history, its
religions--most profound and impressiv