Various

“ The bigger and fuller picture may, indeed, be a greater work of art than the smaller one could ever be, and yet that is so very small a fact! What the artist has done is, first, to make a design out of the material afforded him by a broad landscape and the varied sky, and in the other instance to make a design out of a monotonous grassy slope, a few tree-tops, left unaccounted for except by the beholder's intelligence, and a very uniform gray firmament beyond. Who shall say which is the nobler design of the two? ”

“ And the first painting that the student meets as he enters a gallery of pictures will very likely be a landscape, and he will at once see that in this picture there is no narration, no morality, no piety, no appeal to the spirit—nothing but description, and a description admittedly so slight and cursory, so deliberately incomplete, that it may almost be dismissed as not of weight in the consideration of the picture's value. And yet a picture must represent something natural, something tangible; it cannot go straight to the emotions as music can, but has to act through memory and knowledge. ”

“ We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a report so good. My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. This climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives,—the whole tale of my life is better to me than any poem. ”

“ Most of us instinctively believe in a future life as it is, and will go on believing in it however new proofs may triumph or fail. We think there must be a future life. It is not improbable. What is grossly improbable is that there is none. The wonder is not that there should seem to be feeble glimmerings of intercourse between us who are still here and those who have gone before. The wonder is that it has proved to be so extraordinarily difficult to speak across a grave. Professor Hyslop has probability overwhelmingly with him in his general contention. ”

“ THE Vaudeville Theatre is an American invention. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It is neither the Café Chantant, the English music-hall, nor the German garden. What has been called by a variety of names, but has remained always and everywhere pretty much the same—reeky with smoke, damp with libations, gay with the informalities of the half-world—is now doing business with us under the patronage of the royal American family. ”

“ Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sandboy; you will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay in the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book, no illustrations to speak of, no diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by autumn. I do not think I delude myself when I say the tendency to catarrh has visibly diminished. ”

“ Suppose it even to be a sunset sky, with miles of ocean illuminated by the colored fire above; it is with no hope of adequately representing that sea and sky that he sits down to paint, but he proposes to paint an impression which that sea and sky have made upon his sensitive mind, and which he thinks will be interesting when painted. That, then, is the landscape-painter's subject. Not the whole truth, nor even any essential part of the truth, about a hay-stack or a mountain-range, but an interesting artistic impression made upon the artist's mind by the hay-stack or the mountain-range. ”

“ Hudson is not yet obliged to become busy North River, and there is plenty of water between a white-sailed schooner yacht and a dirty tug slowly towing in silence—for there is no utter excuse for whistling—a cargo of brick for a new country house up at Garrisons; while on the shore itself instead of wharves and warehouses and ferry-slips there are yacht and rowing club houses and an occasional bathing pavilion ”

“ From the artist who balances a set of parlor furniture on his nose to the academic baboon, there is one concentrated, strenuous struggle for a laugh. No artist can afford to do without it. It hangs like a solemn and awful obligation over everything. Once in a while an artist who juggles tubs on his feet is a comedian, but not always. ”

“ They would fill the day with struggle, vying one with another, each trying to make his footing secure; and now and again one of them would fall and be crushed to the ground. They would go to bed again at night, wearied out, and they would sleep again, and waken again, and begin the battle again. Most of them would take part in the combat all in vain, since only a few of them could hope to escape from the fight unvanquished. Most of them would fall by the wayside or be trampled under foot on the high road. ”

“ A man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that. The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy and bleak. Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one iridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach ”

“ Many of them are still standing, or tumbling down; pathetic old things they are, with incongruous cupolas and dusty fanlights and, on the river side, an occasional bit of old-fashioned garden, with a bunker which was formerly a terrace, and the dirty remains of a summer-house where children once had a good time—and still do have, different-looking children, who love the nearby water just as much and are drowned in it more numerously. ”

“ They found George's body next morning on the sands a little below the footbridge. He lay there in the morning sunshine as though asleep, with an arm flung above his head and on his face the easy smile for which men and women had liked him throughout his careless life.
The inquest was held next day, in the library at Carwithiel. Sir Harry insisted on being present and sat beside the coroner. During Taffy's examination his lips were pursed up as though whistling a silent tune. Once or twice he nodded his head. ”

“ Up the river are college and school ovals and athletic fields; on the ridges upon either side are walks and paths for lovers. For the lonely pedestrian and antiquarians, two old revolutionary forts and some good colonial architecture. Whirly go-rounds and big wheels for children, groves and beer-gardens for picnickers; while down on one bank of the stream upon the broad speedway go the full-blooded trotters with their red-faced masters behind in light-colored driving coats, eyes goggled, arms extended. ”

“ I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind, leper beach-combers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have I ever had, nor any so moving ”

“ I never knew the world was so amusing. On the last voyage we had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a full month, except Fanny, who is always ill. All the time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than realities: the people, the life, the beach-combers, the old stories and songs I have picked up, so interesting; the climate, the scenery, and (in some places) the women 478 so beautiful. The women are handsomest in Tahiti; the men in the Marquesas, both as fine types as can be imagined. ”

“ But if you can sing or dance or amuse people in any way; if you think you can write a one-act play, the vaudeville theatre will give you a chance to prove it. One day of every week is devoted to these trials. If at this trial you interest a man who is looking for good material, he will put you in the bill for one performance, and give you a chance at an audience, which is much better. The result of this open-door attitude is a very interesting innovation in vaudeville which is more or less recent, but seems destined to last—the incursion of the dramatic artist into vaudeville. ”

“ I made a mess of my work that morning I know—was fined two dollars at the clearing for a wrong subtraction; forgot to call for a couple of drafts I had left at Shan's—the liquor dealer—the day before; mislaid a registered letter; and entered Boston remittances in the New York book. My thoughts while out of the bank were on John, and while in the bank my eyes were on no one else.
Indeed, there was a fascination in watching the little teller work. He never made more mistakes, perhaps, in his life; but he detected every one of them instantly. ”

“ He, my master—or as I more justly call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African potentate on my subject's legs?—he is delighted with these isles, and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things. He now blows a flageolet with singular effects; sometimes the poor thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his career with truculent insensibility. Health appears to reign in the party. ”

“ This is clear to the mind of the student; but still he ponders over the graphic arts, over sculpture and painting, in all their forms, wondering why those arts seem to him half-way between literature and music, having less to do with preaching or portraiture than the one, and more, it seems, than the other. He finds that painters are more concerned with light and shade, and also more busy with composition and the leading lines and, again, more thoughtful of bringing whites prettily together, than they are of telling any story or influencing any person's conduct. ”

“ But if you believe that there is also an inherent, characteristic beauty in the material manifestations of the spirit of our own new, vigorous, fearless republic—and whether you do or not, if you care to look at one of these sudden contrasts referred to—not a stone's throw farther up the water-front there is a notable sight of newest New York. ”

“ His early life was a history of poverty, struggles, and vicissitudes as circus rider, negro minstrel, and ambitious actor, until his energy and industry conquered and he became the idol of the people. No man on the stage made warmer friends or more bitter enemies, nor was made the subject of more enthusiastic adulation and severe critical censure during the thirty years he was the acknowledged head of his profession. ”

“ One of the most charming views in Switzerland is the evening view of the Jungfrau as seen from the Höheweg or promenade at Interlaken, about sixteen miles from the mountain. With her robes of dazzling white she rises majestically above the Lauterbrunnen Thal to a height of nearly fourteen thousand feet. ”

“ Everyone who comes off the stage Monday afternoon says of the pianist that he ruins their songs; he spoils their acts; he has sinister designs on their popularity, and he wishes to wreck their future. The pianist, on the other hand, says he doesn't mind his work—the five thumping, tyrannous hours—it is the excruciating agony of being compelled to sit through the efforts of the imbecile beings on the stage. ”

“ One comedian walks on and says, "Hello, audience!" and no further introduction is needed; for the audience is trained to the quick and sharp exigencies of the occasion, and neither slumbers nor sleeps.
One of the first things to surprise the actor in the "continuous" house is the absence of an orchestra. The orchestra's place is filled by pianists who labor industriously five hours a day each. As they practically live at the piano, their knowledge of current music and their adaptability and skill are often surprising, but they are the most universally abused men I ever met. ”

“ The mood of craven surrender passed from him as abruptly as it had come, leaving him older, and with a vague impression as though he had had a strange and unnatural experience. He knew again that life is infinitely various, and that it is worth while for its own sake; and he wondered how it was that he had ever doubted it. Even if struggle is the rule of our existence in this world, the fight is its own reward; it brings its own guerdon; it gives a zest to life; and sometimes it even takes the sting from defeat. ”

“ Let us admit that the picture is a nobler work of art because of this expression of human interest—the striking down of the tyrant, the momentary victory of the heroine, the approaching cruel punishment of that heroine—patience, resignation, resolution, patriotism, and just enough of questioning as to the glory and value of the great French Revolution. ”