alf-and-half. It wasn't so easy
as it may seem to you here--to my shame! Besides a trace of conscience,
which was always reminding me that

'Man, after all, has higher goals to seek
Than simply feeding seven times a week;'

besides my own humiliation before myself and a few of my good
colleagues, I was hampered by a real lack of skill. It needs a good
deal to take all the manliness out of one's self, so that one can fit
himself to all the miserable complications, the twisted deformities and
tameness of our modern civilization. But it only depends, after all, on
one's capability of getting the humor out of the thing. The idea that
I, an unmitigated pagan, should establish a manufactory of images of
saints, struck me as so indescribably rich that one fine day I actually
set to work to model a Saint Sebastian, in which task my knowledge of
anatomy stood me in good stead. But, even here, I soon found that it is
only 'clothes that make the man.' It was only when I betook myself to
making draperies, trains, and sleeves, that the result took on the true
devotional air such as the public is accustomed to and desires. And,
since then, I have grown prosperous so fast that now I employ eight or
ten assistants; and, if it goes on, I shall some day bid farewell to
temporal affairs, in the odor of sanctity and as rich as----." (He
named a colleague who enjoyed a continued rush of business.)

"Yes, my dear Icarus," continued he, still more laughingly, as Felix
made no reply to these revelations, "you would not have believed it
all, I know, when in the first fire of youth we rode our proud hobbies,
and called every man a low fool who, in art or life, proved faithless
to his ideals by a straw's breadth. But the mill of every-day life rubs
off much that a man believed was bound to him as with iron--like a very
part of himself. And here you have an example, worth your deep
consideration, of that celebrated 'liberty' you think to find here. If
I allow myself the liberty of doing what I cannot give up, I must, at
the same time, make up my mind to work at absurdities with which my
heart has no sympathy. In order to be an artist, such as I wish to be,
I am compelled to make Nuremberg toys and to display them in the
market-places. But, after all--behind my own back, as it were--I
continue quietly to be my own master. Let thy troubled heart take
courage, beloved son! thy old Daedalus hasn't even yet become quite so
utt