The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1891-01-28
A DIFFERENCE IN CLAY.
[Philadelphia Press

WON sucn oiSCnc7On abroad last fall
and over whom during the following
winter society at home, with her usual
ns1Nuess, had come to rave. 1t is some
tnmg unusual for Philadelphia to arouse
herself over an American, but in SCOTS
case 1t seemed natural enough. The
personal attractions of the man himself.
TO say nothing of the distinction Paris
had bestowed upon him, were grounds
sufficient for his being a social favorite.
Immediately upon his arrival from
abroad he was besieged with invitations
TO receptions and balls, teas and dinners,
and the like. Various societies gave pub
Icreceptions in his honor; the country
clubs lunched him, and the city clubs
gave him dinners. 1t went very well for
time, bat in time, too, it grew most
tirseufne. Scott stood the whole thing
ss long as he could; then, breaking &
dozen or more engagements, he closed
his rooms and went away to the sea-
shore. He had learned to his own salts
tscHon-to his own Disappointment
how little society knew Of his art, how
little she cared, and that it was the gilt
ter OF his medal, not himself, that peo.
Pile loved.
1t was the middle of spring when
Clement Scott came to Hull. He had
lived there during the summers previous
to his going abroad. The sea, the cliffs
the stretches of white sand, the gras.
covered hills, were all very dear to him.
and he smiled as he found the memories
OF these coming back to him. There was
one memory, though, which seemed to
crowd all the beauties of sea and shore
from his thoughts, and then of sudden
10 bring them all trooping back again,
and in the light of his boyhood love.
That love was something which had
never gone from his memory. In his
studio in Paris he had often caught him
self shaping in the soft clay the features
Of that one face. He was good at model
ing, but however truly his hands might
follow his memory, he could never seem
to catch the spirit Of the image in his
mind; he could never put life into the
face sit is not she," he would say. cit
does not love me-" And then he would
crush the clay into shapeless mass and
try his hand at other work.
1t was very natural that Scott should
feel as he did about the face he had
loved in his boyhood. The circumstan-
ces were peculiar. He had saved the
girls life at the risk Of his own. In
crossing track she had fastened her
foot in switch, and must have been
killed had not Scott rescued her. AS it
was she had not escaped without in
jury; her arm had been run over. Some
one said the childs name was Mildred
Bcday. Scott knew the beautiful place
the Bodays had been building on the hill
near his own home, and there he had
carried her, with her dress torn from
the shoulder, and her little white arm,
cruelty crushed and bleeding, hanging
at his side.
The injury was a severe one. 1t be-
came necessary to amputate the child's
arm close to the shoulder, and it was
during this period of her confinement
that Scott came to know Mildred Boday
well. Young as he was, he loved the
beautiful well enough to take joy in
watching Mildred's sweet face, with the
wealth of golden hair which hung about
it, OF in looking into Mildred's blue eyes,
wide open with wonder or joy at his
tales. When Mildred got about again
Clement was her right hand man. The
functions of the arm she had lost were
supplied by an artificial arm Of French
mechanism-an arm that could be moved
at VIII, or even taken off altogether.
That arm was source of great amuse-
ment to them. Sometimes its JOINTS
would stick, and Clement would have to
rescue Mildred from some awkward
position, and then they would laugh and
think it great joke.
At the close of his sixteenth year Scott
went abroad and took up his sculpturing
under an Italian master, first in Rome
and then in Paris. Eight years after
ward he received his medal, and with it
the praise Of the whole of Europe. Then
he returned to America.
Then 1t was that the young sculptor,
with an the glamor of a triumph abroad
and in the midst of an ovation at home,
Left the prattles and insincerities of New
York society for the quiet and for the
girl in the little sea town of Hull.
He found the sea, the cliffs, the
stretches of white sand all unchanged.
Mildred Boday had changed. She was
a woman. But she was Just the same to
him. There was little formality at
first. but formality could not live when
rney were together, and soon they came
TO be the same boy and girl they had
been when they parted.
Scott fixed up his old studio and the
workshop where he had modelled his first
kssd. Mildred helped him to drape his
walls and to place bis belongings, and
when they had finished it was a pretty
study. Scott had ordered block OF
marble from Paris, and when tcame he
set to work upon it to try the expert
ment Of cutting an image directly in the
marble and without the aid of the clsy
model. The image he was to follow was
the Venus Of Milo. He was doing it
solely for pleasure, he said, and so
worked only when he felt like it. Mil
dred was frequently by his side in the
studio. Now and then she would pose
her head to give him an idea of curve
or a line, and always it was more IN fun
than in seriousness that the work went
on.
In, few weeks, however, the head Of
the Venus was freed from the stone, and
TO the wonderment of Mildred, the face
that she had seen hewed bit by bit from
the cold white marble seemed all at once
70 have life, to be real, and more, to be
her own.
She laughed, and she cried.
II feel as if some one had shut me ND
In that stone, ages and ages ago." she
said, ''and that only now you had come
TO take me out"
"And what do you suppose Won would
have done had never Gamer Clement
asked, chiseling away at the Cupid lipso
his statue.
"Always been dead, suppose" she
said with sigh, looking up at him with
roguish smile.
The look was too much for Clement.
The marble lips could not hold him
when the red ones were there, just wait
ing to be kissed; nor could he work more
that day-he was too happy.
But for some unaccountable reason
society had got it into its head that
yourg Scott, "the distinguished Amer
lean sculptor" as he was commonly
called, had left society and gone into Sc
ciusion to work. Strange stories got
about. He was finishing statue he
had been at work upon for years, it was
said, and Immediately artists began to