before going to the office, he managed to produce three or four which
satisfied him and which he kept plates of real beauty. The others he
gave away.

A little later, if you please, it was Turkish rug-making on a small
scale, the frame and materials for which he slowly accumulated, and then
providing himself with a pillow, Turkish-fashion, he crossed his legs
before it and began slowly but surely to produce a rug, the colors and
design of which were entirely satisfactory to me. As may be imagined, it
was slow and tedious work, undertaken at odd moments and when there was
nothing else for him to do, always when the light was good and never at
night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light.
Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods
and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound
and pick and tie and unravel--a most wearisome-looking task to me.

"For heaven's sake," I once observed, "couldn't you think of anything
more interestingly insane to do than this? It's the slowest, most
painstaking work I ever saw."

"That's just it, and that's just why I like it," he replied, never
looking at me but proceeding with his weaving in the most industrious
fashion. "You have just one outstanding fault, Dreiser. You don't know
how to make anything out of the little things of life. You want to
remember that this is an art, not a job. I'm discovering whether I can
make a Turkish carpet or not, and it gives me pleasure. If I can get so
much as one good spot of color worked out, one small portion of the
design, I'll be satisfied. I'll know then that I can do it, the whole
thing, don't you see? Some of these things have been the work of a
lifetime of one man. You call that a small thing? I don't. The pleasure