the requisite letters in the possible style a variety of fanciful that had heretofore distinguished his work in this kind one day during the era of this happy old peter came to visit his former well said he i am glad to hear such good accounts of you from all quarters and especially from the town clock yonder which speaks in your every hour of the twenty four only get rid altogether of your about the beautiful which i nor nobody else nor yourself to boot could ever understand � only free yourself of that and your success in life is as sure as daylight why if you go on in this way i should even venture to let you doctor this precious old watch of mine though except my daughter i have nothing else so valuable in the world i should hardly dare touch it sir replied in a depressed tone for he weighed down by his old master s presence in time said the latter � in time you will be capable of it the old with the freedom naturally consequent on his former authority went on the artist of the beautiful work which had in hand at the moment together with other matters that were in progress the artist meanwhile could scarcely lift his head there was nothing so to his nature as this man s cold v by contact with which every thing was converted into a dream except the matter of the physical world groaned in spirit and prayed fervently to be delivered from him but what is this cried peter abruptly taking up a dusty bell glass beneath which appeared a mechanical something as delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly s what have we here there is in these little chains and wheels and see with one pinch of my finger and thumb i am going to deliver you from all future peril for heaven s sake screamed springing up with wonderful energy as you would not drive me mad do not touch it the slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me forever young man and is it so said the old looking at him with just enough of penetration to torture s soul with the bitterness of worldly criticism well take your own course but i warn you again that in this small piece of lives your evil spirit shall i him you are my evil spirit answered much excited � you and the hard coarse world the leaden thoughts and the despondency that you fling upon mo are my else should long ago have achieved the task that was created for b from an old p� ter shook his head with the mixture of contempt and indignation which mankind of whom he was partly a representative deem themselves entitled to feel towards all who seek other than the dusty one along the highway he then took bis leave with an uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that haunted the dreams for many a night afterwards at the time of his old master s visit was on the point of up the task but by this sinister event he was thrown back into the state whence he had been slowly emerging but the innate tendency of his soul had only been fresh vigor during its apparent as the summer advanced he almost totally his business and permitted father time so far as the old was represented by the and watches under his control to stray at random through human life making infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours he wasted the sunshine as people said in wandering through the woods and fields and along the banks of streams there like a child he found amusement in chasing or watching the motions of water insects there was something truly mysterious in the with which he contemplated these living as they on the breeze or examined the structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned the chase of was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours but would the idea ever be yielded to his hand like the butterfly that it sweet doubtless were these and congenial to the soul they were the artist of the full of bright which gleamed through his intellectual world as the gleamed through the outward atmosphere and were real to him for the instant without the toil and perplexity and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the eye alas that the artist whether in poetry or whatever other material may not content himself with inward enjoyment of the beautiful but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his ethereal domain and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a and fainter beauty imperfectly copied from the richness of their visions the night was now his time for the slow progress of re creating the one idea to which all his intellectual activity referred itself always at the approach of dusk he stole into the town locked himself within his shop and wrought with patient delicacy of touch for many hours sometimes he was startled by the rap of the who when all the world should be asleep had caught the gleam of through the of s shutters daylight to the morbid sensibility of his mind seemed to have an that interfered with his pursuits on cloudy and days therefore he sat with his head upon his hands as it were his sensitive brain in a mist of indefinite for it was a relief to escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to shape out his thoughts during his nightly toil from one of these fits of he was aroused by from an old the entrance 