Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/223

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS SERVANT fishes, of animals, and of flowers would find it hard to maintain (as I have heard it maintained in regard to memory painting) that they thereby lose the character of the subject. It is only when the memory is deficient or insufficient that this danger arises. A pretty story illustrative of this is told of an American traveller who, while in Tokio, had purchased an embroidered picture of a waterfall which he desired to have appropriately framed before leaving Japan. He was directed to the workshop of an expert wood-carver, who accepted the commission; and after consultation a design was selected whose principal decorative motive was the tortoise. Returning in a couple of days, the patron found the artist at work upon the nearly completed frame, which was indeed a beautiful and most artistic creation. While they talked, [173]