Democratic messenger. [volume] (Snow Hill, Md.) 1869-1973, 1882-08-12

Carradine had not had an easy life.
An orphan from his earliest years, poor
and unfriended, he had striven hard for
the means to crafty that inherent idola.
try for art which was always clamoring
lsto find expression in form and coloripg.
He had fought and he had won but,
now, at twenty-six, he stood in the place
which he had gained for himself, almost
as much alone at the very heart, as he
had been eight years before. when the
| child's gift came to him as prophecy.
1t was not that he was friendless.
There were men who liked and sought
him women who would gladly have
Taught him to forget his loneliness in
their affection. But, though his nature
responded readily to any kindliness,
there was one chord, deeper than all,
that remained untouched and, from
the sweetest glances, his thoughts went
back to the unknown child that had
smiled down on him so long ago.
The ideal head became his great
source of enjoyment; and Dreamy
softness shaded his dark-gray eyes, as
line by line and tint by tint took him
back into that past, which, all lifeless
as it was, seemed to him, in those mo-
ments, more real than the busy present
Yet now, In reviewing that one bright
vision of mis- memory, it was not so
much the lovely child that he saw, in
fancy, as the beautiful girl whose face,
with fuller depth and sweetness, looked
out at him from his own canvas.
Instinctively, he hardly knew why,
he disliked to work on this picture in
any other presence, and he devoted to it
only his hours of solitude. So it hap
pened that il was nearly finished when,
by some chance, a friend discovered him
bending over it, too absorbed to notice
| any approach. As the door opened,
Carradine rose hastily, turning his easel
to the wall so as to conceal the face upon
it. This little stratagem, however, was
destined to be of no avail. Having been
marked by the intruder-one of those
cordial. well meaning people, good
natured to degree, but with little deli
cacy of perception-the action at once
aroused his curiosity.
''Aha, master painter" he said, with
laugh, '1et us see what it is that you
work at by yourself till it steals away
yonr eyes and ears. Only one peep r.
With that, he laid his hand on the
frame, and, receiving no forbidding
word from Carradine, turned it round.
The next moment he was loud in praise.
''But who is it, Carradine? If it is
portrait tell me where to find the origi-
nal, and | will, if it is a seven days
Journey -
Carradine smiled.
''If l myself knew where to find such
an original. should not be here to tell
you, my good friend" he answered,
evasively.
"Oh, fancy sketch, said the other,
misled, as the artist had desired. "I
might have saved myself the trouble OF
asking. No real flesh and blood face
ever looked like that-the more shame
to Nature, l say OF course you will
exhibit it, Carradine q
"No," answered the painter, quietly.
''No y repeated the other in surprise.
"But, my dear fellow, You must, or
shall betray your secret, and you will
have a swarm of visitors, worse than
plague of Egypt, let in upon You"
Carradine hesitated. A chance word
IN his friends speech had suggested a
possibility that made his heart leap in
vi sODSi I6hsOu.
"You are right, he said. 81 shall
send the picture for exhibition. It will
be better so.
After his visitor had left him alone
again, Carradine bent long over his
easel, gazing into the lovely, upturned
face, until it began to fade into the
gathering twilight.
"If-ifr' ne murmured to himself
half unconsciously. "But it cannot be-
Yet | will send it-and perhaps ps--'
And so the picture was sent, in due
time; and it seemed almost as if Cara
dimes soul had gone with it and drawn
him to follow. Hour after hour, and
day after day, he sat in the gallery,
scrutinizing eagerly every face amid the
visitors, whom taste or fashion had
brought to look at the now celebrated
artists latest success. Every night he
went away unsatisfied, and every morn
ing he returned with hope springing
afresh in his heart.
Still, the object of his search, what
ever it may have been, does not appear
and one day, discouraged at last, he
resolved to go no more on so fruitless
an errand. Shutting himself in his
studio, he began to paint, but, strive as
he would, he could command neither
hand nor fancy. Finally, tired of re-
peated failure, he abandoned work, and
yielded to the impulse which drew his
stpes in the customary direction.
When he entered the small side room
in which his picture hung, he found but
two persons within, young man and
girl.
Carradine could not see the faces of
these two; but, with an earnestness for
which he was at loss to account, be
followed their retreating figures as they
moved slowly toward his picture. But
the next moment an exclamation of
astonishment burst from the lips of the
young man.
"Why, here is your portrait, Leila
What does it mean? Who can the
painter be?''
With that, he hurried out to purchase
a catalogue. Carradine advanced quick
ly to the girl.
g am the painter" he said.
She turned and looked at him with
one steady gaze from those glorious
eyes which had haunted his visions for
so many years. Then she spoke:
"You painted that picture and howl"
"From remembrance, he answered.
'It was my only tribute to the little I'M
known princess who crowned me once
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