I had a comrade in those days,
somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company
of artists, and a man famous in our small world for
gallantry, knee-breeches, and dry and pregnant sayings.
He, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of the
French, whom I confess I somewhat imitated, branded me
as "a cultivator of restaurant fat." And I believe he
had his finger on the dangerous spot; I believe, if
things had gone smooth with me, I should be now swollen
like a prize-ox in body, and fallen in mind to a thing
perhaps as low as many types of BOURGEOIS--the
implicit or exclusive artist. That was a home word of
Pinkerton's, deserving to be writ in letters of gold on
the portico of every school of art: " What I can't see
is why you should want to do nothing else." The dull
man is made, not by the nature, but by the degree of
his immersion in a single business. And all the more
if that be sedentary, uneventful, and ingloriously
safe. More than one half of him will then remain
unexercised and undeveloped; the rest will be distended
and deformed by over-nutrition, over-cerebration, and
the heat of rooms.
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