DETAIL—SILVERGATE.
longer master of his enthusiasm, he cried out to the author on the stage, “Courage, Molière! Voilà la vraie comédie!” And in good architectural style do we not see a comedy indeed, faithfully enacted? Yet, of the thousand and one things that have gone to make architectural style all intimately connected with human events the influence of individuals has counted least. One generation of builders has taken up the work where its immediate predecessor stopped. Each generation commits its blunders, while each adds the imperceptible trifles of such intrinsic value, taken together, as to have produced style.
The fashions of architecture—they perish. Style endures.
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION
The eye of an artist differs structurally not at all from the eyes of other people. His constant having to do with lines, values and all that, gives him an enviable facility in delineation, the same facility that training would impart in any other vocation; but it is the man—the artist temperament that exists behind the ocular sense that denominates the artist, a matter of pure luck, however, or of birth, which amounts to the same thing.
When nature issues his temperament to a man, she stamps on the back of it the words “not transferable” rubricated. By no effort of his own can he bestow his temperament upon anybody else nor materially alter it within himself. He looks upon things always in a certain way—envious folks call it a squint—never may he see them in any other. He struggles with a personal bias so strong, that, in nine cases out of ten, he had much rather die than have to live his life contrary to the cherished autonomy imposed by temperament.
The artist contends with a temperament unusually exacting and, at times, very inconvenient. I remember having to ride my bicycle twelve miles one afternoon some years ago, to a bakery in another town from where I lived, to gratify a whim of temperament, I suppose, for some particularly delicious tea rolls that were manufactured there. I felt I could not possibly get along with the plain bread and butter I knew we had for supper. I purchased the rolls, and was tying the precious bundles to the handle-bars of my wheel when a carriage drove up in front of the bakery. It contained two rather unprepossessing women who were evidently acquainted with the baker’s wife, judging from the familiar way they called to her from the curb. The baker’s wife came out upon the doorstep, and inquired what kind of bread she should bring them. It was then, without an idea of causing the slightest shock to the sensibilities of the man they saw, with a bicycle, they replied with picturesque indifference—“Oh, any kind, just so long as it is bread to fill-up on!” Overhearing this I could not help making the necessary mental memoranda what unpromising subjects for art influences were the temperaments of these women—how little education could really do for them! how utterly impossible it would be for them to change their temperaments, and how, in all probability, they had much rather be dead than to be continually harrassed by the fastidious obligations of art!