walked slowly up the steep hill, puffing between breaths and mouthing to himself soft Mexican oaths. Upon reaching the shelter of the silver firs he opened his basket. Huge trout, dripping from the river, ranged between layers of sweet fern. He smiled unctuously, displaying them.

"A good day's sport, madam, very good," he reiterated. "These "-- he held the largest, the very fattest, by the gills for inspection “are fine fish, madam, a good catch. I'll wager there's been no finer catch on the river to-day." His assertion was challenging. I thought of the sagging basket on the gray-corduroyed shoulders. "Have you seen the Judge?" he inquired tentatively.

binding caressingly in the dark. He knew the contents by heart—could quote from cover to cover - but he liked the substance under his hand. Those gray eyes saw more than words, searching the broad Milky Way. Lonely watches at sea when he was a lad had made him a recluse, he apologized to me when I urged him to come down to the fire. "I am not good company; my tongue stumbles over your fine English," he excused. “I am more used to the stars and trees and mountains they understand - we are so near." And he begged pardon lest in some way he should have hurt. “You others know so much, have read many books. I know only one." He patted the

"Fish is what a fisherman wants and if he wants fish he must catch them - and bait is what they are taking on the Sacramento this season - I'm giving evidence." And he thumped his basket convincingly.

There was something musical in the quaint precision of his un-English exactness that made pleasant hearing. I remembered the very words he had used; they were fixed in my memory with his deprecating, winning smile.

These things were running through my

Don Danuelo's knotted veins swelled. For a time we plodded silent through the fragrant fir to where the orchard stretched. Then he waxed grandiloquent over the much-threshed subject of bait versus flies. I knew he was girded for battle-royal that night across the suppertable. He was merely practicing phrases on me, and I was a willing target, for I knew the kindness of the heart that sped the shaft.

As we came to the garden gate the reverent figure at the bars had melted into the dusk. The gray Señor had a way of slipping off into lonely corners, and muffling himself in the mantle of silence. His evenings were spent on the upper porch brushed by tips of overshadowing fir, I confess to stealing up the stairs and peeping,—with a book on his knees, - the old philosophy that he loved,— his slender, wrinkled fingers touching the

pleased him better to do the talking, and he did not mind my not answering.

I felt a pang of disappointment at not finding the Señor at the bars, though I had hardly dared hope. Somehow a few kindly words from him were my benediction to the day.

Bidding Don Danuelo go on, I lingered in the orchard where the smell of rotting apples perfumed the air with the tinge of refined musk that no other odor holds, that no one knows the sweetness of unless breathed in the pine-locked mountains where the fruit is nourished on dew, crystal air, generous sunshine, and fragrance of balsamic things. Then, too, the man of the house, after his daily chores, was burning brush and dead leaves at the top of the hill. The pungent smoke floated invitingly to my nostrils, and I wondered if to the Señor it did not waft thoughts of heavenly incense.

A crisp of frost was in the air, a colder

glitter in the stars. The day before, I had noticed a trace of flame creeping up the maples on the ridge, and in the dogwood, azaleas, and wide-leaved saxifrage down by the river the fire of change was slowly kindling. I almost expected to see Pan stealing from a leafy covert to warm his hands at the glow of the leaves.

Don Danuelo had passed on to dry comfort while I snatched the few delicious moments to myself soft duskmoments when smell of earth is strong and sweet, and, if you crouch under a pine on the rim of the orchard as I did, you may hear the rustle of tiny, padding feet, and sense the presence of shy woodcreatures barely brushing the wide mullein leaves as they pass. White butterflies drifted, homing through the half-light; and down in the far field, that drops to the river, a thrush called a belated goodnight. Your soul is lifted; you almost lose the weight of the human in you, and reach to the divine. On the heights you breathe spiritual air, and know what great pines stretching strong arms to the sky know. The wide earth holds — but the wider heavens call. If the exultant moment could last! But earth-born must cling fast to earth until the appointed time to rise shall come. And, somehow, with all our yearning and uplifting we never care to hasten that time.

The homely gathering-room of the rambling house turned an inviting face of light to me. Pine cones blazed on the hearth, mellowing the cool of evening; huge back-logs exuded aromatic rosin, and cheerfully sizzled an old wood-song to the fire-dogs as I crossed the porch to be with my kind.

The Judge, his long, lank frame conjuring up whimsical reminiscences of Don Quixote, was bending over a tin wash-basin set on a long bench, and much splashing of water deadened my footsteps. I joined Don Danuelo in the comfortable light and warmth, and huddled to the blaze, palms out, these mountain evenings are cold and drive the warming blood from the finger-tips,

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while the Don fussed about the desk addressing express tags. He was most generous to his friends and in advertising his prowess. I have observed, in many years' wanderings and close observation of habits and quirks of men, that there is no pride like unto a fisherman's pride, the pride of pounds. A man would rather be considered a good sportsman than a hero. Mayhap the qualities are synonymous, only of different mixing. Don Danuelo swelled with more importance over his catch than he did, I warrant, when singlehanded he quelled that desperate rising of lawless peons on his Mexican rancho. And that was a gallant deed, I have heard; he could never be cajoled into telling of it.

The Judge strode in, his curly hair flat and shining from much water. Don Danuelo, bristling with importance, thrust the basket under the judicial nose.

"Bait?" the Judge queried, lifting his eyebrows.

"Salmon roe, sir."

The Judge's interest faded to indifference, and he passed to the dining-room while the Don grumbled to himself. I tagged after the party in pretense of helping the overworked mistress of the house to serve the overlate supper; partly

I must confess cleanly to pick up the crumbs of talk scattered about the fishermen's table.

The Señor, well brushed, was already in his place; something of the dignity of the night and the great trees was in his manner as he thanked me for the condiments I set before him. Frugally and silently he ate the supper of bacon and eggs, boylike showing me the cheek of a red apple tucked in the gray corduroy pocket, a bonne bouche for the night.

The Judge was belligerent; he liked to tilt. Don Danuelo was defensive between cups of strong black coffee and hearty replenishings of his plate.

fancy glosses the real, and in childlike faith you hold to it.

Those lost fish, the fisherman's hallmark! The mysterious bond that brings together all that go down to the rivers. They never tire of telling, they never tire of listening, for all who cast, know; it is the world-wide sympathy that mellows and binds the craft, the genialest craft under the sun.

With their knees under the table they sat and listened to the time-mossed stories, interest ever new and keen in their hearts. Don Danuelo brought from his pocket a flask of rare old Scotch, and standing raised his glass.

"Gentlemen, to the lost fish! May their memory never grow old, nor their pounds less.'

Before we had quite cleared the table, the Don apologetically wagged his head, and conceded there was skill in casting a line and dropping a fly- and, if he were younger there was no telling The Judge generously hastened to admit that in some cases roe might be used and the man remain a fisherman. He courteously offered to eat his fiery words and soften his adamantine rule, bluntly laid down, with an occasional extenuating exception. The Judge was didactic, but just and great-hearted as to wounding feelings.

The Señor rose from his coffee. "Gentlemen," he said, "it has been a God-given day. I wish you a goodnight."

That sweep of his bow included us all; and he was gone, and more than the man went with him; we all felt the loss.

The Judge and the Don moved to the chimney corner, and talked over reaches and pools. disputing as to shadow and sun, the superiority of this over that side

of the river, and minutely analyzed the habits of trout.

When the last dish was shelved, and the tired little woman was setting bread, I heard the tramp, tramp of the Señor's feet on the upper porch. I knew he was searching the stars and casting into deeper pools of thought than those of earth.

How cleanly, how frugally he lived, one with the stars, the trees, the birds, the restless river, an angling rod, and a book of philosophy for companions. Alone in the world, he peopled it for himself; and in closeness to nature he had crept very close to his God. It was our privilege to have been of his company.

What sordid husks our bodies are for beautiful souls! Don Danuelo to me was all tenderness and consideration. I fancy in memory of that near one, who sleeps long in the old Mexican home, his heart was softened to all women. And the Judge! His chivalry was most prized when he brought me puffs of delicate milkweed, glistening cascara-sagrada berries, and sprays of coral-beaded honeysuckle. The Señor laid at my feet remembrances of his old far-away home and honey of sweetness and wisdom from his beloved book, which shortened the days.

And I, only an ugly, withered, lone woman, who had wandered to the mountains, praying for health, of no comfort, beauty, nor sweetness to any one, received the largesse of their graciousness.

"A God-given day!" Good-night, Señor, Don Danuelo, Judge. May it be a God-given night for all three of you! May your baskets of the morrow be heaped and shining, each to his heart's desire.

And I close my eyes and sleep safe, knowing that there are yet hearts beating in the world for the old and friendless.

WHEN one speaks of Whistler now, it is with the consciousness that he is accepted as among the masters of painting. "C'est un grand seigneur de la peinture qui s'en est allé," says Arsène Alexandre.

To have known Whistler and the attitude of the art world and the picturegallery-going public from 1873 to 1892, is, strange as it may sound, to wonder how this has come about; to wonder why people speak reverently of pictures so recently thought ridiculous, and to speculate as to how many would think them so now, had they but the courage. As indeed one man has, who paid what he thought a "steep price" to get "a Whistler," and confesses he can see nothing in it, wonders what artists do see, and I could sell it for three or four times the sum he gave for it, yet keeps it in his possession.

I speak of Whistler as a painter only. As an etcher, I remember, London thought him "very clever," although Sir Seymour Haden had said that of his two collections he would part with his Rembrandts rather than his Whistlers. Critics nearly all spoke of his etchings with respect, until his finest period, when they pointed out how greatly he had deteriorated. For Whistler's painting, too, by the way, "clever" was the word. Sir John Millais's dictum, given in his Life and Letters by his son, is: “Clever a fellow as he [Whistler] is a man who has never learnt the grammar of his art, whose drawing is as faulty as it can be, he thinks nothing of drawing a woman all out of proportion, with impossible legs and arms proceeding from no one knows where. Any affectation of superiority in style has its effect on certain minds, and attracts a certain number of followers." And Mr. Archibald Stuart-Wortley says: "Once

he [Millais] seized me by the arm and made me go round the Grosvenor Gallery with him. He stopped longer than usual before a shadowy graceful portrait of a lady, by one of the most famous painters of our day an arrangement in pink and gray, or rose and silver, shall I call it? At last, 'It's damned clever, it's a damned sight too clever,' and he dragged me on." This was about 1884, and the famous painter was, of course, Whistler; the portrait one of Lady Meux. But it seems Whistler somehow learned enough of the grammar of art to change the adjective; "clever" is not the word now at all.

Thinking of these things, it is interesting to go back to those years and recall what Whistler himself told me of his attitude toward the world of painting, toward the world that accepts or rejects painting, and to recall situations in which I saw him and noted what he said and did. No artist of our time, leaving us, has been the subject of so much writing, so many recollections. Never has unliterary painting caused so much literature. Not since Ruskin wrote has there been such wordpainting about pictures. Before 1892 little of this appeared. In the above quotations Sir John Millais voices fairly well the whole tone of the leading journals. In France M. Duret, in England George Moore, Walter Sickert, and Joseph Pennell seem the only writers imbued with a spirit of appreciation. Whistler himself had, it is true, devoted the Ten O'clock and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies to painting in words his art and his attitude. And perhaps his own writing inspired much that has followed. In this he was not only literary himself, but the cause of literature in others. And how characteristic that when Mr. Spielmann,