Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/89

84 and even commit the innocent youthful sins and be happy; but when we met together again, we were the same unhappy mortals, Hara with a brush, I with a pen. He always looked comforted by my words when I told him my own tragedy and difficulties to write poetry; both of us exclaimed at once with the same breath and longed for life's perfect freedom. How he wished to cut away from himself and bid a final farewell to many portrait commissions, and become a lone pilgrim on Nature's great highway with only his brush and oil; that was his dream.

Let me repeat again that he was sad with his brush only to make his art still sadder; when he was most happy, it was the time when he left his own studio to forget his unwilling brush and send his love imaginations under the new foliage of spring trees and make them ride on the freedom of the summer air. How he planned for future work while contemplating great Nature; he was a dreamer in the true sense. And dream was to him more real as he thought it almost practicable. I do not mix any sarcasm in my words when I say that he was a greater artist when he did not paint; he rose to his full dignity only when out of his studio; and it was most unfortunate that I found him always ill when he was out of it. But I will say that I never saw one like himself so well composed, even satisfied, on a sick bed; that might have been from the reason that his being