Meetings with King 



securely date it, though a vivid sense 

 remains from it of King's sweet satis- 

 faction in bringing two persons to- 

 gether who tasted the pleasure he 

 meant in making them acquainted. 

 It might have been then that he 

 talked of some of the people in his 

 Western sketches, and especially of 

 that frontier artist with the New 

 York ambitions and longings, whose 

 likeness he had caught but too per- 

 fectly, and who would have been 

 willing to " take it out of him," if he 

 had not been disarmed by King's 

 frank bonhomie when they met. He 

 liked and valued all those grotesque 

 and rude figures, these strong and 

 fibrous human textures of the West, 

 but he had a sense as subtle as its 

 own of the silken Latin and meridi- 

 onal temperament, and it was measur- 

 ably to imagine Cuba to hear him 

 tell of his Cuban cousins and ac- 

 quaintance, who flashed and glistened 

 148 



