the Spread-Eagle Hotel; but even after you have feed the waiter, you
have to chew your own dinner, and are benefited, not by the amount you
pay for it, but only by so much of all that with which the bounteous
mahogany is covered as you can thoroughly masticate, easily contain,
and healthily digest. Elkanah began with the soup, so to speak. He
brought all his Cape-Cod acuteness of observation to bear on his
profession; lived closely, as well he might; studied attentively and
intelligently; lost no hints, no precious morsels dropping from the
master's board; improved slowly, but surely. Day by day he gained in
that facility of hand, quickness of observation, accuracy of memory,
correctness of judgment, patience of detail, felicity of touch, which,
united and perfected and honestly directed, we call genius. He was
above no drudgery, shirked no difficulties, and labored at the
insignificant sketch in hand to-day as though it were indeed his
masterpiece, to be hung up beside Raphael's and Titian's; meantime,
keeping up poor Hepsy Ann's heart by letters full of a hope bred of his
own brave spirit, rather than of any favoring circumstances in his
life, and gaining his scant bread-and-butter by various honest
drudgeries which I will not here recount.

So passed away three years; for the growth of a poor young artist in
public favor, and that thing called fame, is fearfully slow. Oftenest
he has achieved his best when the first critic speaks kindly or
savagely of him. What, indeed, _at best_, do those blind leaders, but
zealously echo a sentiment already in the public heart,--which they
vainly endeavor to create (out of nothing) by any awe-inspiring formula
of big words?

Men grow so slowly! But then so do oaks. And little matter, so the
growth be straight.