"I have not said that. You see you have brought me into perplexity, you
have taken me beyond my depth, by insisting on having my opinion.
I have read a good many art criticisms first and last. Art is gabbled
about a good deal in society, you know, and we have to keep a set
of phrases on hand, whether we understand them or not. But since
you believe in impressions, and will have mine, it is this as nearly
as I can express it. You are under the influence of a school or
a fashion in art, and perhaps unconsciously you are controlled by
this when looking at the scene there. It seems to me that if I were
an artist I should try to get on my canvas the same effects that
nature produces, and I would do it after my own fashion and not
after some received method just then prevailing. Let me illustrate
what I mean by a phase of life that I know more about. There are
some girls in society whose ambition it is to dress in the latest
style. They are so devoted to fashion that they appear to forget
themselves, and are happy if their costume reflects the mode of the
hour, even though it makes them look hideous. My aim would be to
suggest the style rather unobtrusively, and clothe myself becomingly.
I'm too egotistical to be ultra-fashionable. Since I, who am in
love chiefly with myself, can so modify style, much more should
you, who are devoted to nature, make fashion in art subservient to
nature."

"You are right. I have worked too much in studios and not enough
out of doors. Ever since I have been sketching this summer, I have
had a growing dissatisfaction, and a sense of being trammelled. I
do believe, as you say, that a certain received method or fashion
of treatment has been uppermost in my mind, and I have been trying
to torture--nature into conformity. I'll paint this thing all out