“Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it; but—now mind, I’m not really criticising—don’t you think he is just a trifle overstrong in technique?”
The captain’s face was knocked expressionless by this remark. It remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself— “Technique—technique—polytechnique—pyro-technique; that’s it, likely—fireworks too much color.” Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said:
“Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you know—fact is, it’s the life of the business. Take that No. 9, there, Evans the butcher. He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as anything you ever see: now look at him. You can’t tell him from scarlet fever. Well, it pleases that butcher to death. I’m making a study of a sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don’t really reckon I can do it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher.”
“Unquestionably your confederate—I mean your—your fellow-craftsman—is a great colorist—”
“Oh, danke schön!—”
—“in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to say, without imitator here or abroad—and with a most bold and effective touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that—that—he—he is an impressionist, I presume?”
“No,” said the captain simply, “he is a Presbyterian.”
“It accounts for it all—all—there’s something divine about his art,—soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon, vague—murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space—oh, if he—if, he—has he ever tried distemper?”
The captain answered up with energy:
“Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and—”