THE ARTIST
I.
The eye of the attentive observer who wanders through Fifth Avenue, and the streets which run into it from right and left, is especially attracted by the houses, built here in the Colonial, there in the Renaissance style. Some of these imposing edifices (often the only reminder of long-vanished fortunes), with their rich facades, afford a striking criterion of the tastes of their builders and of their former inhabitants.
In one of these houses, rearing their proud height to the sky, a small lap-dog, bedecked with silken ribbons, sat in a parlor window. He stretched his snowy paws with great satisfaction on the cushioned window-seat, warming himself in the April sun. The luxurious room behind him was quite empty, and the enforced solitude was not at all to the taste of the spoiled pet. It was probably for this reason that he did not find it worth his while to bark in a superior manner at the pedestrians who appeared on the street, but a look of silent contempt told very plainly that he had made up his mind to consider as extremely unpleasing the movements of a limping street-cleaner who was at the moment just in front of the house.
In fact, the lame man did not look as if he could pretend being favored with a condescending glance by a lap-dog living amidst such sumptuous surroundings.
He looked, too, as if he had had no great practice at his wretched calling—as if he were a novice at it. Although his sickly, sunken features were surrounded by an unkempt grey beard, and his clothing hung loosely about his wasted form, he somehow gave the impression of being an intelligent man of some education, upon whom undeserved misfortune pressed heavily.
The well-fed pet in the parlor window, however, had no conception of undeserved misery, and was about casting to the winds the carefully drilled manners of an educated dog when, fortunately, a well-appointed carriage drew up just as the lame man was preparing to go on his way.
A delicate-looking lady with a kindly face alighted from the carriage, and nodded smilingly to the little dog. The lame street-cleaner had no sooner glanced at the benevolent face of the richly-dressed woman than his emaciated form began to tremble. His face, so pale before, became red, as with humiliation, and in a state of marked agitation he was on the point of dropping his broom and stealing quietly away.