IX

"OUT THERE"


The old man held the picture up before him and surveyed it with
admiring but disapproving eye. "No one that comes along this way'll
have the price for it," he grumbled. "It'll just set here 'till
doomsday."

It did seem that the picture failed to fit in with the rest of the
shop. A persuasive young fellow who claimed he was closing out his
stock let the old man have it for what he called a song. It was only
a little out-of-the-way store which subsisted chiefly on the framing
of pictures. The old man looked around at his views of the city, his
pictures of cats and dogs and gorgeous young women, his flaming bits
of landscape. "Don't belong in here," he fumed, "any more 'an I
belong in Congress."

And yet the old man was secretly proud of his acquisition. He seemed
all at once to be lifted from his realm of petty tradesman to that
of patron of art. There was a hidden dignity in his scowling as he
shuffled about pondering the least ridiculous place for the picture.

It is not fair to the picture to try repainting it in words, for
words reduce it to a lithograph. It was a bit of a pine forest,
through which there exuberantly rushed an unspoiled little mountain
stream. Chromos and works of art may deal with kindred subjects.