“I knew they weren’t,” said Seppi softly. “I liked doing them; it gave me such nice thoughts about what I should like them to be. But now when I look at them I can see they are frightful. I will go back to my goats!”
Herr Adler looked at Squib with one of his kind smiles, and said,—
“What do you think it is to be a great artist, my little firework friend?”
“Oh, why, to paint great big pictures that everybody looks at and talks about, isn’t it, sir?”
An amused look crept into Herr Adler’s eyes.
“That would be a very easy way of getting to be a great artist. I think even you or I could paint a great monster picture that everybody would stare at who saw it, because it would be so bad.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” answered Squib laughing; then he paused, looked into Herr Adler’s face, and said, “Tell me what you call a great picture, please.”
Then Herr Adler’s blue eyes seemed to look out beyond the faces of his listeners in a way Squib quickly came to know well, and he answered,—
“I think that a great picture is one into which the painter has put something of his own self—his own soul—as well as that thing which he has tried to draw; something which lifts us up above just the thing itself, and makes us feel a breath from the world of nature, or draws our hearts and thoughts upwards towards the Maker of the world. It need not be a large, grand, ambitious work to do that; but it must be the best that the painter has to offer—and it must breathe the spirit of truth.”
Seppi’s face suddenly kindled and glowed.