These last it was one of my first duties to review and
criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were
saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself,
the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the
wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward,
not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I
saw the stream widen that divided me from all I loved.
"Now, Loudon," Pinkerton had said, the morning after
the lecture,--"now, Loudon, we can go at it shoulder to
shoulder. This is what I have longed for: I wanted two
heads and four arms; and now I have 'em. You'll find
it's just the same as art--all observation and
imagination; only more movement. Just wait till you
begin to feel the charm!"
I might have waited long. Perhaps I lack a sense; for
our whole existence seemed to me one dreary bustle, and
the place we bustled in fitly to be called the Place of
Yawning. I slept in a little den behind the office;
Pinkerton, in the office itself, stretched on a patent
sofa which sometimes collapsed, his slumbers still
further menaced by an imminent clock with an alarm.
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