CHAPTER XXX.
Ingenious persons have shown that a five-pound note rightly guided will liquidate an almost unlimited amount of liability. Let it be granted, says the mathematician, that A owes B; B owes C; C owes D, and D owes A,—one hundred shillings in each case. A gives a five-pound note to B, who gives it to C, who gives it to D, who gives it to A. The peregrinations of the same note wipes out twenty pounds of debt, and A has the original bit of paper he started with.
In like manner a clever person can bestow a great favour upon another and at the same time accommodate several others, leaving all under obligations to him; while a blunderer, instead of making everybody happy, would have accomplished nothing beyond creating enemies for himself.
The shrewd Haldiman, bringing some promised work to the editor of “Our National Art,” casually mentioned that Barnard Hope had been invited to send some of his paintings to Paris.
“What! Do you mean the Chelsea giant? Why, that ass doesn’t understand the rudiments of drawing, and as for colour—great heavens! there isn’t a pavement chalk artist who is not his superior.”
Haldiman looked puzzled; then he said with some hesitation:
“I confess I used to think that; but of course we studied together in Paris, and we students always underestimate each other. There is something in Barney’s paintings that I don’t pretend to understand.”
“Understand! Bosh! There’s nothing in them but the vilest and most ignorant smearing ever put upon canvas.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that some of the most advanced critics are beginning to consider Barney seriously, as a new factor in the art world?”