Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/110

70 Angler’s Return,” — a boy showing the results ol his day’s fishing to his mother and sister.. The boy opens his creel, tilted on one knee ; the good woman holds aloft a candle ; the girl, with hands clasped behind her, peers into the basket, and a cat with straight up-lifted tail asks for a savoury morsel of the spoil. One of the fashions of the day is to decry a picture that has a story as being “literary” or anecdotic, but here is a story, as there are multitudes of others, that can better be expressed by the brush than by the pen. All the sketches made by Walker on these evenings were good. I never remember him producing a failure. An amateur who devoted his days to commerce, his nights to art at the Langham, told me that Walker once offered him a batch of these sketches at a very modest price, but he was unable to close the bargain, which has been matter of regret to him ever since. In those early days of Walker’s career we were very intimate ; not a week passed without his going to my house or I to his, when he lived with his brothers and sisters near Baker Street. I have seldom been without a nickname in my life. Walker gave me two. Strolling about one evening, we looked in at some humble sing-song place, under the flimsy pretext of “studying character.” A lean hollow - cheeked, half - starved looking