"Ha! ha! That is what I call Art concealing Art," said Overtop.
"So it is," returned Tiffles; "and it will be appreciated, I doubt not, by those who affect the school of Severe Simplicity in painting."
"One thing more," said Marcus Wilkeson. "Do you intend to take the panorama through the country, and lecture on it?"
"I do. And here let me say, that I read up the law of false pretences long ago. I shall style myself Professor Wesley on the bills. That I have a right to do, as my full name doesn't look well in type. Actors and singers do the same thing every day. I shall call myself a great traveller. This is strictly true. I have been North to Boston, West to Detroit, and South to Baltimore. I shall not say that I have been in Africa, or that the sketches were taken on the spot. If my audience choose to infer that, that is their business. If any one doubts the accuracy of my panorama, I can say triumphantly, 'Prove it!'"
"Excellent, but a little risky," said Marcus Wilkeson, who could not help admiring the audacity of the plan. "Your next great difficulty will be to satisfy audiences after you have got them together, as I dare say you will, by some brilliant system of advertising. I have heard--perhaps you have--of audiences breaking furniture, smashing chandeliers, and tarring and feathering people."
"All that has been thought of," was the reply. "Before I leave the city, I shall give a private exhibition of the panorama to a few ministers of various denominations, in the lecture room of some up-town church. Ministers, you know, are debarred by their profession from attending the opera and theatres, and will catch at the chance to see a panorama for nothing. In private life, they are capital people, as a class--I have known several of them--and will willingly certify that the panorama is a highly moral, instructive, and interesting exhibition. I think I can rely on my persuasive powers for that much. These certificates I shall print on my posters and handbills. They will draw moral audiences. Moral audiences do not break furniture, &c., &c. Comprehend my line of argument?"
"Perfectly," said Marcus; "and very ingenious, as an argument."
"I thought you would like it. And now, to drop the subject, I want you three fellows to come up to my rooms, No. 121, third floor, Bartholomew Buildings, Broadway--you remember--and see this great work of art, early next week."
"Is it nearly finished?" asked Marcus.
"Yes--in my mind's eye. That is the main thing. The painting has not yet been begun. It will be a very simple matter. The canvas will be about four hundred feet long. One half of it will be a dead level of yellow paint, for desert; and the rest, perpendicular stripes of green paint, for jungle. A good artist, with a whitewash brush and two tubsful of paint, ought to do up the whole panorama in two days. The heads and tails of animated life, the two small lakes, and a few other objects of interest, such as the sun, the moon, birds flying in the air, &c., could be put in afterward by an artist of higher grade. And, by the way, now I think of it, I may as well open with a sunrise off Cape Guardafui, and a distant view of the Straits of Babel Mandel, give a passing glance at the sources of the Nile, which lie in that undiscovered region, a brief glimpse at the Mountains of the Moon, and wind up with a splendid sunset in the Bight of Benin. It--"