a city.
Richard Shackford working for Rowland Slocum at Stillwater was
happier than Michaelangelo in Rome with Pope Julius II. at his back.
And Richard was the better paid, too!

One day he picked up a useful hint from a celebrated sculptor, who
had come to the village in search of marble for the base of a
soldiers' monument. Richard was laboriously copying a spray of fern,
the delicacy of which eluded his pencil. The sculptor stood a moment
silently observing him.

"Why do you spend an hour doing only passably well what you could
do perfectly in ten minutes?"

"I suppose it is because I am stupid, sir," said Richard.

"No stupid man ever suspected himself of being anything but
clever. You can draw capitally; but nature beats you out and out at
designing ferns. Just ask her to make you a fac-simile in plaster,
and see how handily she will lend herself to the job. Of course you
must help her a little."

"Oh, I am not above giving nature a lift," said Richard modestly.

"Lay a cloth on your table, place the fern on the cloth, and pour
a thin paste of plaster of Paris over the leaf,--do that gently, so
as not to disarrange the spray. When the plaster is set, there's your
mold; remove the leave, oil the matrix, and pour in fresh plaster.
When that is set, cut away the mold carefully, and there's your
spray of fern, as graceful and perfect as if nature had done it all
by herself. You get the very texture of the leaf by this process."

After that, Richard made casts instead of drawings for the
carvers, and fancied he was doing a new thing, until he visited some
marble-works in the great city.

At this period, whatever change subsequently took place in his
feeling, Richard was desirous of establishing friendly relations with
his cousin. The young fellow's sense of kinship was singularly
strong, and it was only after several repulses at the door of the
Shackford house and on the street that he relinquished the hope of
placating the sour old man. At times Richard was moved almost to pity
him. Every day Mr. Shackford seemed to grow shabbier and more
spectral. He was a grotesque figure now, in his napless hat and
broken-down stock. The metal button-holes on his ancient waistcoat
had worn their way through the satin coverings, leaving here and
there a sparse fringe around the edges, and somehow suggesting little
bald heads. Looking at him, you felt that the inner man was as
threadbare and dilapidated as his outside; but