"Morals!" echoed Wooton, with a bland smile, "my dear boy, you want to take a pill. No; take two! Morals in this day and age; moreover, on the borders of Bohemia, to talk about morals! Jove, I see myself forced to seek the solace of the deadly cigarette." He lit one of those slender rolls of tobacco and paper and went on, "However you haven't answered Stanley's questions yet. For you must know, Van, that Belden is one of the most extravagant and insatiable hunters of art books in all this town. Ever been in his flat? Well, it's a series of rooms, completely lined with books and pictures, with a very small hole in the middle of each room. Said hole being usually filled—to use an Irishism—with a center-table loaded to the guards with art portfolios. I don't believe there's a book or art store in town that the man doesn't owe large bills to; and I know, for a fact, that when it comes to be a question between a new overcoat and a new art book, he always takes the latter. And as for his schemes—well, I will admit they're all good, but, like the good, they die young. While they have the merit of exceeding novelty, they ride him like the plague; but presently a new idol comes and the old one falls into decay. Tell us, Dante, about the newest scheme!"
"H'm," replied the artist, "I don't see that you've left me anything to tell. I've got a new book of Vierge's stuff that you fellows want to come up and see one of these days; that's about all that I can think of."
"Thank you for the pressing invitation," said Wooton.
"Oh, and about that fellow you sent up to see me," Belden continued, "I liked his stuff immensely. He needs a little experience and hard luck on the practical side of getting his stuff made into cuts, and he'll be all right. The fact is, Wooton, seeing you like the fellow's sketches fairly well, and I'm rushed to death with other work, I've thought of turning my work for the Torch over to him. Would you object?"
"Not a bit, provided he does it as well; and he won't have to get much of a move on to do that. And then they're cheaper when they're green!"
Belden groaned. "You're the most awful specimen of materialism I ever hope to run up against. Then you don't object to this fellow—what's his name again, Lancaster, isn't it?—doing your sketches? All right, I'll train him a bit for you. And then I guess it would be a good scheme for him to have a desk here in your office somewhere, so that he can have a workshop and be right at hand for you. It isn't as if he had a studio of his own."
"That'll be all right; we've got plenty of room. But while you're training him, old man, I hope you won't inoculate him with that villainous style of dressing you adopt at the end of your pen. You're very hot people on everything that's got to be done in a hurry, and you're great on fine work of the etching order, but when it comes to making people look like the men and women one would care to be seen with, you're simply not in this county, that's all there is about it. I've always claimed, you know," he went on, turning a little so that he faced Vanstruther and Stanley, "that the great fault common to all the black-and-white artists in this town was that they couldn't define the difference between a gentleman and a hoodlum. They talk to me about technique, and drawing, and all the rest of it, none of which, I will admit, I know a mortal thing about; but all I answer is that I'm going from the point of view of the man who doesn't know how the drawing is made, but who does know how it looks when it's finished. The people of today look at nearly everything for it's merely superficial aspect; and the finer people look to our artists to display taste in clothing their pictorial creatures. If you only dress your people well, they'll want your drawings so that they can get fashion pointers from them. Now-a-days an illustrator has got to be more than a mere manipulator of pen and ink; he has got to keep an eye on the fashions, and even a little ahead of them. At least, that's what the man I'm looking for should be."
Stanley muttered, around the edges of his mustache, so that only Vanstruther could hear, "Yes; and he'd want to pay him as much as ten dollars a week!"
Belden laughed, and got up. "Why don't you put all that into a lecture, Wooton, and give the fellows over at the Institute a glimpse of this higher knowledge of yours. However, I've got to be going. I'll send that man Lancaster over here in a day or so. Goodbye, people!"
"There's one of the cleverest fellows with a pen in this town," said Wooten, as soon as the artist's footsteps had died away down the corridor, "but he's utterly spoiled himself by the work he's been doing of late years. He's a very fast worker, and one of the best men a daily paper ever got hold of. Then, too, I've seen copy-work of his—that is, from photographs or paintings—done in pen-and-ink, that had all the fine detail and effect of an etching. But, for the sake of the money there is in it, he does blood and thunder illustrations for a paper of that sort. After a man has done that sort of thing for a year or two, it gets into his style. I don't believe he'll ever be able to do anything else, now. Of course, he'll aways make good money, because his speed and capacity for work are simply invaluable; but art, as far as he is concerned, must be weeping large salty tears."