"Ah, yes, goats," said Leighton, but his thoughts were not on goats. Back in his den, he took from a drawer in the great oak desk the kid that Lewis had molded in clay and its broken legs, for another had gone. He looked at the fragments thoughtfully. "To my mind," he said, "there is little doubt but that you could become efficient at terra-cotta designing; you might even become a sculptor."
"A sculptor!" repeated Lewis, as though he voiced a dream.
Leighton paid no attention to the interruption. "I hesitate, however, to give you a start toward art because you carry an air of success with you. One predicts success for you too—too confidently. And success in art is a formidable source of danger."
"Success a source of danger, Dad?"
"In art," corrected Leighton.
"Yesterday," he continued, "you wanted to stop at a shop window, and I wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'" Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six! Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph' was a triumph once. He turned it into a mere success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize his picture, not in sturdy, faithful prints, but in that—that rubbish."
Leighton strode up and down the room, his arms behind him, his eyes on the floor.
"Taking art into the poor man's home, they call it. Bah! If you multiply the greatest glory that the genius of man ever imprisoned, and put it all over the walls of your house,—bath, kitchen and under the bed,—you'll find the mean level of that glory is reduced to the terms of the humblest of household utensils."
A smile nickered in Lewis's eyes, but Leighton did not look up.
"Art is never a constant," he continued. "It feeds on spirit, and spirit is evanescent. A truly great picture should be seen by the comparative few. What every one possesses is necessarily a commonplace.