ich the sketches might
possess.

When the last page had been turned, and Jansen, with a quiet "hm!" had
begun to pile up the books and tablets in a little tower, Felix was
forced to ask whether he had not made some progress after all.

"Progress? Why, that depends upon the way you look at it."

"And how do you look at it, old fellow?"

"I?--Hm! I look at it from a geographical point of view."

"You are very good. I understand perfectly."

"Don't be angry, my dear fellow, but understand me rightly. I mean, on
the path of dilettantism, on which you have been wandering up to this
date, all progress must necessarily be deceptive, even though,
outwardly, you have circumnavigated the world; for, after all, all your
efforts move in a circle. I am very sorry for it, though."

"For what?"

"That you really want to take up art in earnest. You might have
remained such an enviable dilettante, for you have all the necessary
qualifications to an uncommon degree."

"And they are?"

"Self-confidence, time, and money. No, don't be angry. I am truly
serious when I say this to you, and of course it would be needless for
me to assure you that I mean well when I say it. Seriously: these
traveling sketches of yours are done so skillfully that any of the
illustrated papers might consider themselves lucky if they had such
special artists. And yet I wish, since you are determined to be an
artist, that they were not half so skillful."

"If it is nothing more than that, a remedy can easily be found. You
will soon see how much talent I have for unskillfulness, when you give
me something to model."

The sculptor shook his head gently. "It is not the hands," he said. "It
is the mind that has already attained a very respectable maturity and
facility in you; only, unfortunately, in a wrong direction. For the
truth is, my dear fellow, the very things that please you best, and
have probably most impressed unprofessional persons, the dash and
readiness, the so-called artist's touch, those are the very things that
stand most in the way of your getting back into the right track. It is
just as if, instead of learning to write in the ordinary way, one
should begin with stenography. He never in all his life will have a
good handwriting. For the spirit of dilettantism, take it for all in
all, is, like that of stenography, in the art of abbreviation; in
substituting a symbol for the _form_, just as in the other case
we substitute one for the let