honeysuckle arbours, on the banks of starry waves! O Youth, Youth!

Vance ladled out the toddy and lighted his cigar; then, leaning his head
on his hand and his elbow on the table, he looked with an artist's eye
along the glancing river.

"After all," said he, "I am glad I am a painter; and I hope I may live to
be a great one."

"No doubt, if you live, you will be a great one," cried Lionel, with
cordial sincerity. "And if I, who can only just paint well enough to
please myself, find that it gives a new charm to Nature--"

"Cut sentiment," quoth Vance, "and go on."

"What," continued Lionel, unchilled by the admonitory interruption, "must
you feel who can fix a fading sunshine--a fleeting face--on a scrap of
canvas, and say 'Sunshine and Beauty, live there forever!'"

VANCE.--"Forever! no! Colours perish, canvas rots. What remains to us
of Zeuxis? Still it is prettily said on behalf of the poetic side of the
profession; there is a prosaic one;--we'll blink it. Yes; I am glad to
be a painter. But you must not catch the fever of my calling. Your poor
mother would never forgive me if she thought I had made you a dauber by
my example."

LIONEL (gloomily).--"No. I shall not be a painter! But what can I be?
How shall I ever build on the earth one of the castles I have built in
the air? Fame looks so far,--Fortune so impossible. But one thing I am
bent upon" (speaking with knit brow and clenched teeth), "I will gain an