r got back
from--

"Do you know Chelsea at all?" asks one of them, of an anarchic-looking
young man.

Never got back, as I was about to say, from Chelsea. A couple of other
anarchic-looking young men are viewing a painting in the manner that a
painting, or perhaps this particular painting, is intended to be viewed;
that is by squinting at it first over the tops of their hands and then
through their fingers. They discuss it darkly, in low, passionate tones.
They advance upon it; and, a few inches before it, one, as though holding
a brush in his hand, sweeps eloquently with his arm, following the
contour of the painted figure. Legerdemain kind of thing, painting,
isn't it? Sort of a black art, when you see into the science of it.

Well, I declare! Here's a friend of mine--there, talking with the
Titian-haired lady in the exotic gown. Now, he is coming over to us.

He says he wants us to know Ben-Gunn, who is here, "one of the new
crowd," he says. My friend is very keen on the new crowd; everything
else he declares is "passe." Anyhow, it is a very valuable experience to
talk with an exhibitor at an art exhibition. Your mind is impregnated,
until it swells dizzily in your head. That would be he, the
illiterate-looking little creature with the uncombed and
unsanitary-looking mop.

There! I knew he would say something, something that would never leave
you again the same. "Nothing is shiny in Nature," says Mr. Ben-Gunn as
though rather depressed, surveying a canvas in this respect unhappily
divorced from the truth. "Nature," he adds with Brahminic finality, "is
always dull."

Mr. Ben-Gunn is greeted affectionately by a gentleman you always see at
every art exhibition. This is Mr.--I forget his name--it is French; I
know he writes on Art for _Demos_; a remarkable being who apparently
talks, hears, and sees nothing else but aestheticism. For as there are
types peculiar to art exhibitions, so there are certain individuals
apparently quite peculiar to art exhibitions. Come, let us go on down to
see some Old Masters. Notice there in the corner the foreign-looking
gentleman with the three foreign-looking children. That, the quiet,
cultivated, foreign father and his children, is one of the pleasantest
sights frequently to be seen at art exhibitions. Thus he is to be seen,
easily and intimately discussing the pictures with his attentive
followers.

The great point about the study of art exhibitions from the