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288 alphabet of drawing! His strong point, he intimated, was his sentiment; but is it a consolation, when one has been painted a fright, to know it has been done with peculiar gusto? One by one, I confess, we fell away from the faith, and Mr. Theobald did n't lift his little finger to preserve us. At the first hint that we were tired of waiting and that we should like the show to begin, he was off in a huff. Great work requires time, contemplation, privacy, mystery! O ye of little faith! We answered that we did n't insist on a great work; that the five-act tragedy might come at his convenience; that we merely asked for something to keep us from yawning, some inexpensive little lever de rideau. Hereupon the poor man took his stand as a genius misconceived and persecuted, âme méconnue, and washed his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does me the honor to consider me the head and front of the conspiracy formed to nip his glory in the bud, a bud that has taken twenty years to blossom. Ask him if he knows me, and he 'd tell you I'm a horribly ugly old woman who has vowed his destruction because he would n't paint her portrait as a pendant to Titian's Flora. I fancy that since then he has had none but chance followers, innocent strangers like yourself, who have taken him at his word. The mountain's still in labor; I've not heard that the mouse has been born. I pass him once in a while in the galleries, and he fixes