The Newtown bee., 1900-06-01

any preceptible hesitation, and after shaking it in manner that seemed to ef- face both the application and its refusal, sat down and almost immediately resum- ed most entertaining account he had been giving me of the makeshifts of ar- tist life. And from that day to the end of and on-Curley and were friends.
 Life, it strikes me, is very much like a game of dominoes, we being the blocks. Every block has two ends, counting the blanks, otherwise those pretty, fanciful and instructive combinations into figures, whether lin real life or in fiction-char- acter acting and reacting on character could not be formed.
 The moral end of Curley, as I gauged him, was blank, and our little game of sociability would speedily have termina- ted had not his other end been One of artistic perception, and art, as believe have mentioned, is hobby of mine. Nevertheless, frequently while in con- tact with Curley's numbered end, his blank end gave me much uneasiness for, not having lost sight of my purpose to sound his philosophy of life, occasional ly during his discourses on esthetics, I led him to diverge to morals.
 "Weil," he said, on one such occasion, five remarked that civilized mankind is divided into but two categorieg-those who provide for rainy day, figuratively and morally speaking, and those who do not. l have observed that when a man prepares for rainy day, either he is cut off before the clouds gather, or else his sun sets clear, though, of course, if he doesn'E prepare, it rains unceasingly. Ergo: The man who lays up what he will never in the inherent nature of things need, stores up 30 much wild honey (ferae nsturae in law) and the man who seeks, finds, eats and enjoys this honey wrongs nobody"
 Except the man's heirs," gently In. sinuated.
 ) "Oh, as to his heirs," rejoined Curley, "they, as matter of necessity, ,::must fall into the one category or the other; il provident, instinct will prompt them st 8 very early age to make wild honey, los. ing no working time in fruitless regrets and if improvident, they'll go right of in search of wild honey, and cannot in con. sistency blame wild-honey eaters."
 Shade of my bewigged grandfather Whither had this infatuation for the fine arts led me for companionship2 For the sake of my grandchildren (six in number) I must forgo the society Of this man, whose end would be-could only be-she penitentfary. The foregoing is what thought. What said was:
 "Well, after this slight Aggression, let us return to the school of Fra Bsrtolom- meo." % This conversation took place sometime \ in the second year of my acquaintance with Curley, and within his studio, which last, by the way, compared with the sky. lighted attic to which he had once trans. ported me as the Paolo Veronese of that humble apartment with it's mean envi. comments. Nevertheless, as my glance passed apprsisingiy from one elegant and beautiful object to another, I could but ! admire what industrious insects bees are, and tanner, even in the wild state, than one who knew not their ways could have believed but, as this was about the 20th studio in which I had found Curley sue. cessively installed, some part of their ' seeming innocuity. as I reflected might possibly be attributed to Cur1ey's clever ness in preventing them from alighting ! on his person.
 Though McKim was the most enter. taining art critic have ever met, his own productions were but mediocre, at least to the amateur. Indisputably, he understood thoroughly the prinoiplesland mechanism of his art, but his subjects, when developed, in respect to action, hardly appeared worth while. His work was decorative in sense, and could be viewed once or twice with 8 certain kind { and degree of pleasure, but after that one took them as one takes pier glass, fresco or anything of that order.
 Such, however, was not the opinion of ,, Roderic Cleaver, g young protege of Cur ley's son of his present landlady, and 8 paper-hanger by trade. Roderic, upon one service or another, papering, hanging pictures, draping curtains and so on, had been much about Curley's apartments when the latter moved in, and he would gaze and return to gaze upon McKim's s productions as if enraptured. Curley be- came much interested in Roderic, telling me once he believed if the young mana native powers had been liberally cultur. ed he would have developed considerable original talent somewhere along the lines Of art. He said Roderic was an excep tional man. Roderic was that. and more