IN WAY OF TASTE.
Troilus and Cressida; iii.--3.


Grant Herman's studio, in which the Pagans met that night, was in
its way no less unique than the company there gathered. It was a
great, misshapen place, narrow, half a hundred feet long, and
disproportionately high, with undressed brick walls and cement floor.
The upper half of one of the end walls was taken up with large windows,
before which were drawn dingy curtains. Here and there about the place
were scattered modeling stands, water tanks mounted upon rude tripods,
casts, and the usual lumber of a sculptor's studio; while upon the
walls were stuck pictures, sketches, and reproductions in all sorts of
capricious groupings.

In one corner a flight of stairs led to a gallery high up against the
wall, over the rude railing of which looked the heads of a couple of
legless statues. From this gallery the stairs continued to ascend until
a door near the roof was reached, leading to unknown regions well up in
the building behind which the studio had been built as an afterthought.
On shelves were confusedly disposed dusty bits of bronze, plaster,
coarse pottery and rare glass; things valueless and things beyond price
standing in careless fellowship. A canvas of Corot looked down upon a
grotesque, grimacing Japanese idol, a beautiful bronze reproduction of
a vase by Michael Angelo stood shoulder to shoulder with a bean-pot
full of tobacco; a crumpled cravat was thrown carelessly over the arm
of a dancing faun, while a cluster of Barye's matchless animals were
apparently making their way with great difficulty through a collection
of pipes, broken modeling tools, faded flowers and loose papers. Every
where it was evident that the studio of Herman differed from heaven in