pil will soon learn, as she
did, that a good opera-glass is indispensable. Let any one who has not
tried it look with such a glass at sunset-decked water in motion. I am
sure they will be startled by its beauty, and this especially if the
surface be seen from a boat, because merely to look down on water is to
make no acquaintance with its loveliness. A scroll of paper to limit the
view and cut out side-lights also intensifies color. The materials my
pupil is to use are words, and words only. Constant dissatisfaction with
the little they can tell us is the fate of all who use them. The
sketcher, the great word-painter, and even the poet feels this when,
like Browning, he seems so to suffer from their weakness as to be
troubled into audacious employment of the words that will not obey his
will, torment them as he may. Yet, as my pupil goes on, she will find
her vocabulary growing, and will become more and more accurate in her
use and more ingenious in her combination of words to give her meaning.
As she learns to feel strongly--for she will in time--her love will give
her increasing power both to see and to state what she sees, because
this gentle passion for nature in all her moods is like a true-love
affair, and grows by what it feeds upon.

When we come to sketch in words the rare and weird effects, the storm,
the sunsets that seem not of earth, the cascade, or the ravage of the
"windfall," it is wise not to be lured into fanciful word-painting, and
the temptation is large. Yet the simplest expression of facts is then
and for such rare occasions the best, and often by far the most
forceful.

I venture, yet again, to give from a note-book of last year a few lines
as to a sunset. I was on a steam-yacht awaiting the yachts which were
racing for the Newport cup.

August 6, time, sunset; level sea; light breeze; fire-red sun on
horizon; vast masses of intensely-lighted scarlet clouds; a broad track
of fiery red on water; three yachts, with all sail set, coming over this
sea of red towards us. Their sails are a vivid green. The vast mass of
reds and scarlets give one a strange sense of terror as if something
would happen. I could go on to expand upon "this color such as shall be
in heaven," and on the sails which seemed to be green, but for the
purpose of a sketch and to refresh the traitor memory in the future, the
lines I wrote are enough and are yet baldly simple.

Out of this practice grow, as I have said, love of ac