Take that No. 9, there,
Evans the butcher. He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as
anything you ever see: now look at him. You can't tell him from scarlet
fever. Well, it pleases that butcher to death. I'm making a study of a
sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do
it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher."
"Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman--
is a great colorist--"
"Oh, danke schon!--"
--"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to
say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective
touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and
romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that--
that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?"
"No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian."
"It accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,--
soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon,
vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and
far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he
ever tried distemper?"
The captain answered up with energy:
"Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and--"
"Oh, no, it vas not my dog.
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