"Yes," he replied. "There is a great deal of difference between matches, too, if you will only look closely enough, but they all make about the same blaze."
* * * * *
A certain gentleman whose portrait Whistler had painted failed to appreciate the work, and finally remarked, "After all, Mr. Whistler, you can't call that a great work of art."
"Perhaps not," replied the painter, "but then you can't call yourself a great work of nature!"
* * * * *
The artist and a friend strolled along the Thames Embankment one wonderfully starry night. Whistler was in a discontented mood and found fault with everything. The houses were ugly, the river not what it might have been, the lights hard and glaring. The friend pointed out several things that appealed to him as beautiful, but the master would not give in.
"No," he said, "nature is only sometimes beautiful—only sometimes—very, very seldom indeed; and to-night she is, as so often, positively ugly."
"But the stars! Surely they are fine to-night," urged the other.
Whistler looked up at the sky.
"Yes," he drawled, "they're not bad, perhaps, but, my dear fellow, there's too many of them."