The remarks made by street loafers and errand-boys, too, who stand at your elbow for half-an-hour at a stretch, are not encouraging, as a rule. One boy, in what he considers a tone of confidence, will say to another—
“S’elp me, Bob, aint ’e a doin’ it a fair treat.”
“Carry me out” (it is impossible to write “out” as they pronounce it), “’Arree, ain’t it fine” (rising intonation on the “I”)—“I wish I wos a bloomin’ hartist.”
“Don’t ’e fancy ’isself, just.”
It is difficult to keep quietly on at work with every appearance of indifference under such circumstances. It is also exasperating to be called “Matey,” as though you were a pal of theirs, and lived on the same landing. Yet these are only a few of the indignities with which a poor artist has to put up.
Who has not, when on a sketching tour, felt the contempt that the bucolic mind has for a man who, day after day, and week after week, sits out of doors on his camp-stool, doing his best to catch some of Nature’s mystery and fleeting beauty, and give it an abiding place on his canvas.
My friend S—— is a big, healthy, bearded fellow, who looks as though he could pick half-hundred weights up in each hand with the ease that I pick up my palette. The following dialogue took place on one occasion between him and an elderly rustic who had been standing watching him for some time, as he sat by the roadside, painting.
“No offence, sir,” said the agriculturist, “but is anything the matter wi’ yer?”