industry, vivid imagination, good-cheer and good taste have had an
incalculable influence on art. We have more canvases from his hand than
from the hand of any other master. And these pictures are a quarry to
which every artist of today, consciously or unconsciously, is indebted."




MEISSONIER

I never hesitate about scraping out the work of days, and
beginning afresh, so as to satisfy myself, and try to do better.
Ah! that "better" which one feels in one's soul, and without
which no true artist is ever content!

Others may approve and admire; but that counts for nothing,
compared with one's own feeling of what ought to be.

--_Meissonier's Conversations_

[Illustration: MEISSONIER]


Life in this world is a collecting, and all the men and women in it are
collectors.

The question is, What will you collect? Most men are intent on collecting
dollars. Their waking-hours are taken up with inventing plans, methods,
schemes, whereby they may secure dollars from other men. To gather as
many dollars as possible, and to give out as few, is the desideratum. But