Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/382

374 and his children's behavior;—and the end of that man was dreary, if he was only a drone in the hive of the Lord. In our day the Church is militant, and needs her ministers in the field. Those who are not able to fight will be sent to garrison some remote post, where there is no danger and little pay.

Art offers many more inducements to our young friends. If they have a knack for sketching and a "feeling for color," as the slang goes, they need not waste much time in preparatory study. Let them devote themselves to landscape. It is easy to draw a tree that will not shock the eye of an ordinary observer. Little outlay is needed to hire a room; none whatever to call it a studio. This magical word furnishes it at once, and covers every deficiency in chairs, tables, and carpet. Studio, Artist,—excellent well-sounding names! In them is often the secret of the whole business.

An artist has this advantage over other men,—he may indulge in whatever amusements his means can afford him, and no one will find fault. Every class has its own standard of manners and conduct. The measure and rule for artists have come over the sea, condensed from French feuilletons and Vies de Bohême. They are supposed to belong, by right of profession, to a reckless, witty, singing, and carousing guild. It is almost needless to say that the real life of the hard-working men who have earned fame by the brush is as unlike all this as possible. But these vague, ultramarine notions of fun and revelry have taken possession of the American mind, just opening to art, and established the standard for artists here. It exists in fact only in the imagination; for, excepting a few ebullitions in the way of hair, beards, and black sombreros, our artists are as saturnine as the rest of us, and not as good company around the mahogany as a judicious combination of clergymen and lawyers. Nevertheless, so powerful is the conventional, when it has once taken root in the imagination, that some of our younger artists believe themselves to be wild, rollicking fellows, who despise the humdrum existence of the rest of us, although they are sober and economical, pay their bills weekly, and talk their morning paper like other people. Young correspondents! you will perceive what a chance is here for you. If a kind public, in its youthful enthusiasm for art, invests these steady-going citizens with such delightful romantic qualities, it will of course wink at any irregularities of conduct on your part, as in strict keeping with the character.

In addition, you will always find us of the press your trusty friends. Although behind the scenes myself, the peculiar connection that exists between items-men and artists is as inexplicable to me as the partnership of the owl and the prairie-dog in their dwellings on the plains. Why, when we make every other calling pay roundly for a notice, we puff the artists gratis in the most conspicuous columns of the paper, is a puzzle to me. But the fact exists. Hire your studio, nail up your name on the door, and we will make a pet of you at once, and pat you encouragingly on the back. You shall have little paragraphs of this kind: "Salvator Smith is studying atmospheric effects in the Brooklyn Mountains"; or, "Smith, our own Salvator, is making studies from nature near Roxbury"; or, "He has a grand classical picture on his easel in Green Street, representing a celebrated American in the character of the infant Hercules, strangling the British lion with one hand and the Gallic cock with the other." Few of our readers may have heard of Smith, but they read these iterated notices, and soon believe Smith to be somebody. And he has the sweet sensation of seeing his name in print at no expense to himself, and the rare luck of fame before it is earned. In the circle he adorns he will be looked upon as a judge in all matters æsthetical. It is only necessary to have painted a poor picture in order to be an authority in architecture, music, poetry, dress, decoration, furniture, private theatricals, and fancy balls.

At this moment the fashionable world is an oyster, which with his spatula an