him, I not only forgot my own troubles, but put some hope into him.
We had met, two tired and dispirited men, we went away cheered and
encouraged, aware that we were not each of us the only sufferer in
the world and that there were possibilities still ahead of us all,
nay, in our grip, if we only were not blind and forgetful.



May 8, 1889.


I saw the other day a great artist working on a picture in its
initial stages. There were a few lines of a design roughly traced,
and there was a little picture beside him, where the scheme was
roughly worked out; but the design itself was covered with strange
wild smears of flaring, furious colour, flung crudely upon the
canvas. "I find it impossible to believe," I said,--"forgive me for
speaking thus--that these ragged stains and splashes of colour can
ever be subdued and harmonised and co-ordinated." The great man
smiled. "What would you have said, I wonder," he replied, "if you
had seen, as I did once, a picture of Rossetti's in an early stage,
with the face and arms of one of his strange and mysterious figures
roughly painted in in the brightest ultramarine? Many of these
fantastic scraps of colour will disappear altogether from the eye,
just lending tone to something which is to be superimposed upon
them."

I have since reflected that this makes a beautiful parable of our
lives. Some element comes into our experience, some suffering, some
anxiety, and we tend to say impatiently: "Well, whatever happens,