So Chapin saw them out of his studio. Not until Caper found himself
seated on a stone bench under the ilexes of the Villa Borghese, watching
the sunbeams darting on the little lizards, and seeing far off the
Albanian Mountains, snowcapped against the blue sky--not until then did
he breathe freely.

'Rocjean,' said he; 'that stone-cutter down there--that Chapin--'

'_Chameau!_ roared Rocjean. 'He and his kind are doing for art what the
Jews did for prize-fighting--they ruin it. They make art the
laughing-stock of all refined and educated people. Art applied solely to
sculpture and painting is dead; it will not rise again in these our
times. But art, the fairy-fingered beautifier of all that surrounds our
homes and daily walks, save paintings and statuary, never breathed so
fully, clearly, nobly as now, and her pathway amid the lowly and homely
things around us is shedding beauty wherever it goes. The rough-handed
artisan who, slowly dreaming of the beautiful, at last turns out a stone
that will beautify and adorn a room, instead of rendering it hideous,
has done for this practical generation what he of an earlier theoretical
age did for his cotemporaries when he carved the imperial Venus of
Milos. Enough; _this_ is the sermon _not_ preached from stones.'


A BALL AT THE COSTA PALACE

One sunlight morning in February, while hard at work in his studio,
Caper was agreeably surprised by the entrance of an elderly uncle of
his, Mr. Bill Browne, of St. Louis, a gentleman of the rosy, stout,
hearty school of old bachelors, who, having made a large fortune by