A NEGLIGIBLE EXPERIMENT
“I CAN’T get him right, somehow,” the young sculptor said, but he looked tenderly at the little figure of the man he was modelling in plasticine, as if, despite its very obvious defects, he found something to admire in his creation.
“Wants stiffening, doesn’t he?” I suggested. “Couldn’t you put a wire or something up his legs and back?”
“Well, you see,” my young friend explained, “I could if I knew beforehand exactly what I was going to do with him. Only I don’t. I like to make him up as I go along. I’m no good at it really. I can’t think it all out ahead and then sit down and do it right off. I have to experiment and—see how it comes, you know. Do you think his head is too big?”
I thought it was rather big.
The young modeller regarded his creation with a look in which fondness still seemed to preponderate.
“Perhaps if....” he said; then speech died out of him as his hands again began to fashion and improve his little image of humanity.
And as I watched him a vision came to me. I lost consciousness of the boy and his workshop. I wandered away into a dreamland of the imagination, following the lure of a fantasy deeper and more satisfying than the reality of life.