heartfelt sigh from the lips of another lady.

"Yes," she said, "that is what I find such a comfort in Mr. Twelvemough's
books."

"We were speaking of Mr. Twelvemough's books," the first lady triumphed,
and several began to extol them for being fiction pure and simple, and
not dealing with anything but loves of young people.

Mr. Twelvemough sat looking as modest as he could under the praise, and
one of the ladies said that in a novel she had lately read there was a
description of a surgical operation that made her feel as if she had
been present at a clinic. Then the author said that he had read that
passage, too, and found it extremely well done. It was fascinating, but
it was not art.

The painter asked, Why was it not art?

The author answered, Well, if such a thing as that was art, then anything
that a man chose to do in a work of imagination was art.

"Precisely," said the painter--"art _is_ choice."

"On that ground," the banker interposed, "you could say that political
economy was a fit subject for art, if an artist chose to treat it."

"It would have its difficulties," the painter admitted, "but there
are certain phases of political economy, dramatic moments, human
moments, which might be very fitly treated in art. For instance, who
would object to Mr. Twelvemough's describing an eviction from an East