On May afternoons in the Fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray flannel, Fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. The pill swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it rebroken and reset under ether. His first words on coming to were: "Give me my paint box." All the nurses of his ward fell for him with a loud crash. In all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they went to for him. His friends smiled in their sleeves.
As often as there was a play of Shaw or Ibsen or Galsworthy or Maeterlinck or Shakespeare or Synge there were expeditions to peanut heaven. Knoblauch's Kismet happened along and Fritz appropriated the cry: "Alms! for the love of Allah" for occasions choicely inappropriate.
When a fine May morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over Beacon Hill, across the Common, and down into Newspaper Row for breakfast at the celebrated Spa. On the way up Chestnut Street, where the Brahmin pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of the sources of income which sustained these Georgian fronts and mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there, notorious industrial nose-grinding in Fall River spinning mills—merry clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... On the Common, jocund morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth; sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... Spring!
And on a stool at the Spa, Fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. After which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the Art Museum to see the morning and to save his father carfares.
It appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. He proved it. On a May evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of the city on a train for Cape Ann. At the end of the shore road around the Cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. At Gloucester he was introduced to one of Wonson's clam chowders and we set off at dusk.
That evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose—his higher than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits assured him a livelihood. Something was said about Pittsburgh and the mills.
"They ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. Not sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. Some day. I don't know enough yet."
Thunder had been muttering distantly. The night had turned pitch black. There were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. Would he be for turning back? Not he! Then the storm came crashing and pelting across the granite moors of the Cape. Gorgeous flashes which flushed the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. Flash! Crash! Swish went the rain. And the harder it stormed the better he liked it. He strode along intoxicated with color and sound.
Near Annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. Not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a tiny cottage. Wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked.