handles at the side for convenience in carrying. They were painted and
varnished, and were in all respects complete; they had indeed won
favorable mention at an exposition of the Provincial Society of Arts
and Industries, and Ferris could applaud their ingenuity sincerely,
though he had his tacit doubts of their usefulness. He fell silent
again when Don Ippolito called his notice to a photographic camera, so
contrived with straps and springs that you could snatch by its help
whatever joy there might be in taking your own photograph; and he did
not know what to say of a submarine boat, a four-wheeled water-
velocipede, a movable bridge, or the very many other principles and
ideas to which Don Ippolito's cunning hand had given shape, more or
less imperfect. It seemed to him that they all, however perfect or
imperfect, had some fatal defect: they were aspirations toward the
impossible, or realizations of the trivial and superfluous. Yet, for
all this, they strongly appealed to the painter as the stunted fruit of
a talent denied opportunity, instruction, and sympathy. As he looked
from them at last to the questioning face of the priest, and considered
out of what disheartened and solitary patience they must have come in
this city,--dead hundreds of years to all such endeavor,--he could not
utter some glib phrases of compliment that he had on his tongue. If Don
Ippolito had been taken young, he might perhaps have amounted to
something, though this was questionable; but at thirty--as he looked
now,--with his undisciplined purposes, and his head full of vagaries of
which these things were the tangible witness.... Ferris let his eyes
drop again. They fell upon the ruin of the breech-loading cannon, and
he said, "Don Ippolito, it's very good of you to take the trouble of
showing me these matters, and I hope you'll pardon the ungrateful
return, if I cannot offer any definite opinion of them now. They are
rather out of my way, I confess. I wish with all my heart I could order
an experimental, life-size copy of your breech-loading cannon here, for