an artist of myself. I won prize after prize. The master, walking up and
down back of us, lingered longest over my easel. There was a fellow sat
beside me who had nothing. I made sport of him and called him Sleepy Jock
after a dog we used to have about our house here in Caxton. Now I am here
idly waiting for death and that Jock, where is he? Only last week I saw in
a paper that he had won a place among the world's great artists by a
picture he has painted. In the school I watched for a look in the eyes of
the girl students and went about with them night after night winning, like
Mike McCarthy, fruitless victories. Sleepy Jock had the best of it. He did
not look about with open eyes but kept peering instead at the face of the
master. My days were full of small successes. I could wear clothes. I
could make soft-eyed girls turn to look at me in a dance hall. I remember
a night. We students gave a dance and Sleepy Jock came. He went about
asking for dances and the girls laughed and told him they had none to
give, that the dances were taken. I followed him and had my ears filled
with flattery and my card with names. In riding the wave of small success
I got the habit of small success. When I could not catch the line I wanted
to make a drawing live, I dropped my pencil and, taking a girl upon my
arm, went for a day in the country. Once, sitting in a restaurant, I
overheard two women talking of the beauty of my eyes and was made happy
for a week."

Telfer threw up his hands in disgust.

"My flow of words, my ready trick of talking; to what does it bring me?
Let me tell you. It has brought me to this--that at fifty I, who might
have been an artist fixing the minds of thousands upon some thing of
beauty or of truth, have become a village cut-up, a pot-house wit, a
flinger of idle words into the air of a village intent upon raising corn.