A QUESTION OF ART

I

John Clayton had pretty nearly run the gamut of the fine arts. As a boy at
college he had taken a dilettante interest in music, and having shown some
power of sketching the summer girl he had determined to become an artist.
His numerous friends had hoped such great things for him that he had been
encouraged to spend the rest of his little patrimony in educating himself
abroad. It took him nearly two years to find out what being an artist
meant, and the next three in thinking what he wanted to do. In Paris and
Munich and Rome, the wealth of the possible had dazzled him and confused
his aims; he was so skilful and adaptable that in turn he had wooed almost
all the arts, and had accomplished enough trivial things to raise very
pretty expectations of his future powers. He had enjoyed an uncertain
glory among the crowd of American amateurs. When his purse had become
empty he returned to America to realize on his prospects.

On his arrival he had elaborately equipped a studio in Boston, but as he
found the atmosphere "too provincial" he removed to New York. There he was
much courted at a certain class of afternoon teas. He was in full bloom of
the "might do," but he had his suspicions that a fatally limited term of
years would translate the tense into "might have done." He argued,
however, that he had not yet found the right _milieu_; he was fond of that
word--conveniently comprehensive of all things that might stimulate his
will. He doubted if America ever could furnish him a suitable _milieu_ for
the expression of his artistic instincts. But in the meantime necessity
for effort was becoming more urgent; he could not live at afternoon teas.