Last summer I took Nina and Marie and young Arnold, he is ten now, down on the Maine coast to an island where Billy and some of his artist friends have a camp. As I mingled with this colony of ardent young people, in spite of the sympathy, which real friendship with Billy has given me for them, I felt like a stranger. I am sure they think I am an old fogey. My mind kept jumping back to my own youth, comparing them with what I had been at their age. In so many ways they were better men than I was, better equipped for life.
I remember especially one conversation with Billy. He had just finished a canvas as the twilight was falling. I think it is the finest thing he has done yet. There is a stretch of surf in the foreground and beyond the islands rise higher and higher to the peak of Mount Desert. I cannot describe it beyond these barren details. Somehow he has accentuated the rising upward lines, by some magic of his color he has infused the thing with immense emotion.
"What are you going to call it?" I asked as he was putting up his tubes.
"It hasn't any name," he said. "It's just a feeling I get sometimes—up here with the sea and the mountains." He pondered it a moment, seeking words. He is not a ready talker. "I think it's one of the psalms," he said at last, "you know the one that begins: 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' It's sort of religious—being all by one's self and looking up."
"What is your religion, Billy?" I asked.
He sat silent, stopped arranging his brushes and looked off at the last of the sunlight on the summit of the mountain.
"Have you got one?" I persisted.
"Oh, yes," he said quickly. "Yes—at least sometimes it comes to me. There are days on end when it doesn't come—barren days. And then again it comes very strong. I haven't any name for it. I think the trouble with most religions is that people try to define them. It doesn't seem to fit into words."
Again he was busy with his kit. But when everything was ready, instead of starting home, he sat down again.
"It's funny," he said, "I'm quite sure you can't talk about religion satisfactorily. But we all want to. And as soon as you try to put it into words some of it escapes—the best part of it. I think that's why painting appeals to me. You can say things with colors you can't with words.