Part 34 (1/2)

He see on his lips

”The voice of the enemy,” I commented

”Yes, sir, the voice of the enemy,” he added ”But don't think that I think I'm done for Not at all I have just returned toout In a year or two I'll have solved my problem, I hope I may have to leave here, and I ”

He did have to leave, however, public opinion never being allowed to revert to hierial position in New York, he died He had h, but the tiht He had no guiding genius, possibly, to pull hih

Adherents did not flock to hian, non-andistic quality, anyhow The fates did not fight for hinore the billions and billions of others who fail Yet are not all lives more or less failures, however successful they may appear to be at one time or another, contrasted, let us say, hat they hoped for? We co--our drea fast enough, or they may not _In medias res_

But as for him?

_WLS_

Life's little ironies are not always edies, but rarely are we permitted to witness the reality Therefore the real incidents which I am about to relate may have some value

I first called upon WL S----, Jr, in the winter of 1895 I had known of him before only by reputation, or, what is nearer the truth, by seeing his nareat Sunday papers attached to several drawings of the ht scenes of the city of New York, and appeared as colored supplehteen inches They represented the spectacular scenes which the citizen and the stranger hted by a thousand lamps and croith ”L” and surface cars; Sixth Avenue looking north from Fourteenth Street

I was a youthful editor at the ti illustrations of this sort, and when a little later I was in need of a colored supplement for the Christmas nu about the world of art save what I had gathered from books and current literary comment of all sorts, and was, therefore, in a ly bizarre in the atmosphere hich I should find my illustrator surrounded

I was not disappointed It was at the time when artists--I ly for that sort of thing Only a few years before they had all been going to Paris, not so much to paint as to find out and ireeted by a s individual arrayed in a bicycle suit, whose countenance could be best described as wearing a perpetual look of astonish solelass His skin was anything but fair, and ht be termed sallow He wore a close, sharp-pointed Vandyke beard, and his gold-bridge glasses sat at alood eye alert, his hair sandy-colored and tousled, and his whole y, and, above all, a rasping and jovial sort of egotism which pleased me rather than otherwise

I noticed noto the fact that I was very reatly concerned about the price which he would chargedesirous of conificence and independence

”What's it for?” he asked, when I suggested a drawing

I infore center?”

”Yes”

”Well, I'll do it for three hundred dollars”

I was taken considerably aback, as I had not conteet that fro my hesitation, ”wherever a supplement is intended”

”I don't think I could pay more than one hundred,” I said, after a few moments' consideration

”You couldn't?” he said, sharply, as if about to reprove me

I shook my head