These remarks were not addressed to the offending canvas nor to the
imaginary countryman, but to his chum, Sam Ruggles, who sat hunched up
in a big armchair with gilt flambeaux on each corner of its high
back--it being a holiday and Sam's time his own. Ruggles was entry clerk
in a downtown store, lived on fifteen dollars a week, and was proud of
it. His daily fear--he being of an eminently economical and practical
turn of mind--was that Jack would one day find either himself tight shut
in the lock-up in charge of the jailer or his belongings strewed loose
on the sidewalk and in charge of the sheriff. They had been college
mates together--these two--and Sam loved Jack with an affection in which
pride in his genius and fear for his welfare were so closely interwoven,
that Sam found himself most of the time in a constantly unhappy frame of
mind. Why Jack should continue to buy things he couldn't pay for,
instead of painting pictures which one day somebody would want, and at
fabulous prices, too, was one thing he could never get through his head.

"Where have those pictures been, Jack?" inquired Sam, in a sympathetic
tone.

"Oh, out in one of those God's-free-air towns where they are studying
high art and microbes and Browning--one of those towns where you can
find a woman's club on every corner and not a drop of anything to drink
outside of a drug-store. Why aren't you a millionnaire, Sam, with a
gallery one hundred by fifty opening into your conservatory, and its
centre panels filled with the works of that distinguished impressionist,
John Somerset Waldo, R.A.?"

"I shall be a millionnaire before you get to be R.A.," answered Sam,
with some emphasis, "if you don't buckle down to work, old man, and