for it or sorrow.



A Chinese Fairy Tale


Tiki-pu was a small grub of a thing; but he had a true love of Art deep down
in his soul. There it hung mewing and complaining, struggling to work its way
out through the raw exterior that bound it.

Tiki-pu s master professed to be an artist: he had apprentices and students,
who came daily to work under him, and a large studio littered about with the
performances of himself and his pupils. On the walls hung also a few real
works by the older men, all long since dead.

This studio Tiki-pu swept; for those who worked in it he ground colours,
washed brushes, and ran errands, bringing them their dog chops and bird's-nest
soup from the nearest eating-house whenever they were too busy to go out to it
themselves. He himself had to feed mainly on the breadcrumbs which the
students screwed into pellets for their drawings and then threw about upon the
floor. It was on the floor, also, that he had to sleep at night.

Tiki-pu looked after the blinds, and mended the paper window-panes, which were
often broken when the apprentices threw their brushes and mahl-sticks at him.
Also he strained rice-paper over the linen-stretchers, ready for the painters
to work on; and for a treat, now and then, a lazy one would allow him to mix a
colour for him. Then it was that Tiki-pu's soul came down into his
finger-tips, and his heart beat so that he gasped for joy. Oh, the yellows and
the greens, and the lakes and the cobalts, and the purples which sprang from