Prosperity's the very bond of love.
-Winter's Tale.
WHAT a perfect chequer-board is this same game of life on which we all hold so transient a lease. Time is the board, and the various vicissitudes of life make up the chequered field, ourselves the wooden "men;" each and all strive for preferment, and whether it be gained or not, depends solely upon the shrewdness of him who plays the game. The "king-row" may designate the pinnacle of earthly wishes and hopes, while the various "moves" may show the struggle for that desirable goal-happiness. Ah! how many of us get "penned" and "cornered"—and many too, in their headlong course, are "jumped," and taken off the scene of action. Truly, there is a vast similitude between this game of chequers and the bolder one of life.
Here was poor Carlton but lately struggling along the chequered field, now moving literally towards the king-row. In a few subsequent weeks, with a well-filled purse, he was enjoying life and his art like a true gentleman, and was the envy of every artist in Florence; and yet they all strove to do him honor, at least; so it appeared, orders for his productions crowded upon him from all the nobility, not only of Florence, but of all Tuscany. The private palaces of the environs of the city were thought incomplete in their collections, unless supplied with one at least of his pictures, the patronage of the Grand Duke, and his own work, which occupied the favored place in the Pitti Palace, having raised him to the pinnacle of fame as an artist.
All Italy honored the productions of the fortunate American, and scarcely could a Raphael or a Titian have been more respected or honored. It was his own genius that had raised him and no accident of fortune.
"This young American monopolizes the market with his brush just now," said one artist to another.
"Ay, and gets such princely prices, too, for his pictures! Funny world, this! It is scarcely three months since he was likely to starve for want of work."
"All the Grand Duke's doings; he can make as easily as he can mar a man", replied the other.
"But a man must have genius to fill the place Carlton holds."
"As much as you might put on a knife's point-no more," said the other, enviously.