Dorian | Page 9

she carefully laid on a little more color.
"Nature itself, our teacher told us, is always more intense than any
representation of nature."
She worked on in silence for a few moments, then without looking
from her canvas, she asked: "Do you like being a farmer?"
"Oh, I guess so," he replied somewhat indefinitely. "I've lived on a
farm all my life, and I don't know anything else. I used to think I would
like to get away, but mother always wanted to stay. There's been a lot
of hard work for both of us, but now things are coming more our way,
and I like it better. Anyway, I couldn't live in the city now."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't seem able to breathe in the city, with its smoke and its
noise and its crowding together of houses and people."
"You ought to go to Chicago or New York or Boston," she replied.
"Then you would see some crowds and hear some noises."
"Have you been there?"
"I studied drawing and painting in Boston. Next to farming, what
would you like to do?"
He thought for a moment--"When I was a little fellow--"
"Which you are not," she interrupted as she changed brushes.
"I thought that if I ever could attain to the position of standing behind a

counter in a store where I could take a piece of candy whenever I
wanted it, I should have attained to the heights of happiness. But, now,
of course--"
"Well, and now?"
"I believe I'd like to be a school teacher."
"Why a teacher?"
"Because I'd then have the chance to read a lot of books."
"You like to read, don't you? and you like candy, and you like
pictures."
"Especially, when someone else paints them."
Mildred arose, stepped back to get the distance for examination. "I
don't think I had better use more color," she commented, "but those
cat-tails in the corner need touching up a bit."
"I suppose you have been to school a lot?" he asked.
"No; just completed the high school; then, not being very strong,
mother thought it best not to send me to the University; but she lets me
dabble a little in painting and in music."
Dorian could not keep his eyes off this girl who had already completed
the high school course which he had not yet begun; besides, she had
learned a lot of other things which would be beyond him to ever reach.
Even though he were an ignoramus, he could bask in the light of her
greater learning. She did not resent that.
"What do you study in High School!" he asked.
"Oh, a lot of things--don't you know?" She again looked up at him.
"Not exactly."

"We studied algebra and mathematics and English and English
literature, and French, and a lot of other things."
"What's algebra like?"
"Oh dear, do you want me to draw it?"
"Can you draw it?"
"About as well as I can tell it in words. Algebra is higher mathematics;
yes, that's it."
"And what's the difference between English and English literature?"
"English is grammar and how sentences are or should be made. English
literature is made up mostly of the reading of the great authors, such as
Milton and Shakespeare,"
"Gee!" exclaimed Dorian, "that would be great fun."
"Fun? just you try it. Nobody reads these writers now only in school,
where they have to. But say, Dorian"--she arose to inspect her work
again. "Have I too much purple in that bunch of salt-grass on the left?
What do you think?"
"I don't see any purple at all in the real grass," he said.
"There is purple there, however; but of course, you, not being an artist,
cannot see it." She laughed a little for fear he might think her
pronouncement harsh.
"What--what is an artist?"
"An artist is one who has learned to see more than other people can in
the common things about them."
The definition was not quite clear to him. He had proved that he could
see farther and clearer than she could when looking at trees or
chipmunks. He looked critically again at the picture.

"I mean, of course," she added, as she noted his puzzled look, "that an
artist is one who sees in nature the beauty in form, in light and shade,
and in color."
"You haven't put that tree in the right place," he objected! "and you
have left out that house altogether."
"This is not a photograph," she answered. "I put in my picture only that
which I want there. The tree isn't in the right place, so I moved it. The
house has no business in the picture because I want it to represent a
scene of wild, open lonesomeness. I want to make the people who