DO YOU WANT TO BE AN ARTIST. 245 



to portray the floral world, and you are not in the presence of reality 

 You simply see the effigies of things -beautiful. So nature rises 

 supremely above art, and the painter can only touch the hem of our 

 garments. 



Did you ever watch the flowers as they were making their toilets? 

 No lady of fashion displays more exquisite taste or greater care in 

 adornnfent. There must be a touch here and another there. The 

 outer petals must be just so large, the inner must wear just such 

 colors. Watch the La Tulip peony unfold. Did ever maiden before 

 her glass show greater skill or pay more attention to detail. First 

 you see a swelling bud, the surface interlaced with green and red. 

 Then the ball expands, bound in bands of delicate pink and crimson 

 Look again, what a marvel of loveliness! Now the ball opens show- 

 ing a lovely form of delicate flesh and carmine. Now it breathes nd 

 the breath has such sweetness. You look again and it is changing. At 

 first it is the blush of the morning; then comes purest white with now 

 and then a dash of red, and slowly it fades away, dying so gracefully,^ 

 and by its side another is going through the same process. Look 

 around you, see the columbine, the lilies, the majestic Oriental pop- 

 pies, all busily at work, intent as blooming girls to put on their choic- 

 est garments. You can call these things into life, but where in all 

 the wide world is the genius who can transcribe this work — these 

 ever changing robes of beauty — yea the life of these radiant hosts that 

 put themselves on dress parade to reward you for your interest on their 

 behalf? Never warm hearted maiden in the radiant glow of her first 

 love ever tried to make herself more attractive than these dainty 

 flowers, which array themselves in all the witchery of their loveliness, 

 that they may give you welcome. 



What would you think of a picture on a vast scale 100 to 200 

 feet, every portion of which was aglow with the clearest and finest 

 representation of the choicest gardens of flowers? Such a production 

 would put a man at the very front of his profession. A building would 

 be erected for it and crowds would come to visit it. What if he 

 could so reproduce them that the spectator would breathe their 

 breathe and could see them making their toilet. 



Now it is possible for you my friend, be you man or woman, boy 

 or girl, in one tenth of the time it would take to train a painter, to 

 reproduce the living forms in all their delicacy, with the tints of the 

 rainbow woven into their garments with touchings and pencilings and 

 tracery, far more exquisite than ever came to human genius. 



See that Oriental poppy. It is seven inches across. It is a fiarae 

 fashioned into a flower of dazzling brightness. Look within. See 

 those delicate, tremulous stamens. See that seed pod. Could human 

 skill mould its equal? See those pencilings all done up in jet. Put it 

 on the canvas? No! Such an object is the despair of the artist. What 

 an immense amount of the highest skill nature displays in making 

 that single flower and yet last year you got a little root like a parsnip. 



