pose him; how I would arrange that huge body. This feeling grew on me, until I became quite mad to paint him.

It was almost seven o'clock when we finished eating. The negro cleared away the dishes, and we sat and smoked our wet tobacco. Then he reappeared, carrying some dirty blankets, put them down, asked us if there was anything else we wanted, and at our "no," went back into the kitchen. Carter and I talked for a while and then turned in on the floor with our blankets about us. Carter, I am sure, went to sleep almost at once. I closed my eyes and began one of those endless thought-chains that most people indulge in before sleeping, my mind skipping heedlessly from one subject to another. Yet always it came back to this strange negro, and the painting I would make of him. I could visualize every bit of it; see the detail, every pigment of the color. I really think I could have painted it then precisely as one colors a photograph, and always that giant black was the personification of it, as though I had always painted him, and he had stepped bodily out of the canvas.

I was awakened by little Carter poking me in the side. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The room was flooded with soft light. It startled me until I remembered that the moon had risen. Everything, indoors and out, was bathed in that silver mellowness that only a harvest moon gives. It must have been a beautiful night, but still I couldn't understand why Carter should wake me up to look at it; even a harvest moon is common enough. I was preparing to discuss his shortcomings in detail, when he leaned over and whispered to

me:

"Our friend is holding an 'at home.' He's been at it for some time now."

I listened and I could hear a low murmur of voices coming from the kitchen. The murmur was punctuated here and there by a plainly audible oath. The thing was interesting; Carter and I left our blankets, and stole over to the kitchen door. It was

85

a battered affair with a wide gap by each hinge, so that we could easily see through.

It was a larger room than I had thought, and looked older than the rest of the house. In its center was

a great oaken table at each end of which, jammed into the necks of two broken bottles, were candles. The flames of the candles went straight up toward the ceiling. All the windows were barred; there wasn't a breath of air in the room. Around the table, their faces grotesquely tinged and shadowed in the dim light, sat a strange company. They were all negroes, and seemed to be playing nickel high-card. At the end of the table, and facing us, was a dealer, a little bullet-headed yellow man, his neck encompassed with a high collar and a red tie. A cigar butt, which he chewed around and around, was stuck in the corner of his mouth. He had his thumbs in his vest, and was leaning back in his chair. ing back in his chair. On his right was an individual whom I would have sworn was either a politician or a minister. He was tall and lank and dressed in rusty black. Opposite him was a very dirty darkey, his clothes in rags and tatters and his eyes rolling with excitement. There was nothing very distinct about the others to me-just lumps of black flesh, but behind the little yellow man, like a distorted shadow, loomed up the negro who had let us in. The outlines of his figure, merging with the smoky wall behind him, were indistinct, but his face-and what a face it was!stood out like a cameo cut in black ivory. Have you ever seen a caged animal who smells the food about to be thrown to him. That's how that giant black looked. His mask of servility had dropped from him as a woman peels off a glove, and he was as we had first seen him in the doorway. It was as though he had changed his very soul, and by some marvelous transformation had brought the beast in himself uppermost. His body was hunched over as though he were waiting to spring, his arms were slightly

swinging, and across his face was skewered that hideous, twisted, grin. The game must have been a long one, since some of the players had many nickels before them, while others had few. The little yellow man deftly shuffled and gave out the cards. Beads of sweat gathered on the forehead of the darky in rags. Slowly he pushed out on the table all his remaining money. Then with the utmost furtiveness he reached down, pulled up a card, and neatly substituted it for the one he had received. The thing was so beautifully done as to be almost imperceptible, but like a flash the great negro leaped the table and grasped the cheat by the throat. It was as instantaneous as though prearranged. That was all we saw, for the next instant the candles were out and there was wild confusion. We

could hear the beat of running feet outside. Then came silence, followed by the relighting of a single candle. The room was empty except for the little yellow man and his giant guard, who was cringing under a berating he was receiving. It made me think of a great mongrel dog cowering at a stick in the hands of a small child. Gone was all the surly power, the evil strength. The little yellow man strode to the door and went out, slamming it behind him.

Slowly, as though a hand were pressing itself down upon his facial muscles, the giant's expression changed. Line by line the features. tightened, the liniaments shaping themselves with a horrible precision as though a sculptor were deftly modeling them out of wet clay. Bit by bit, with a thousand minor evolutions, the face worked itself into a hideous entirety, and there stood before us the negro of the vine-covered doorway, the negro who had leaped the table to grasp the cheat by the throat. We saw him gather himself up and grasp the table with his great hands. The muscles of his arms flexed and contracted as though he were tearing something to bits. Suddenly, with a sweep of his hand, he brushed the

light from the candle. We jumped back, and silently rolled up in our blankets. Perhaps he might come in to look at us; we were taking no chances.

We were up early the next morning, but the negro was up before us, the fawning, docile creature we had come to fear. He gave us breakfast—a good breakfast—which we received with our best attempts at naturalness. We payed for our lodging, and I gave him my card and an extra dollar, saying that I wanted him a day or two as a model. I impressed on him the fact that he would be well paid for easy work. That any one should want to paint him seemed to give him a satisfaction almost childlike. Sane or insane, I wanted him; in fact, I needed him and had to have him. Then we left, Carter telling me that he felt as though he had emerged from a particularly dark and disagreeable tunnel. We hired a wagon to take us to Chaddsford. The incident seemed closed.

Carter went home. soon after that, and left me to myself. I improved the opportunity by getting over a good deal of work. I finished all the illustrations for the Arabian story, with the exception of a single painting. It was to be of a great blackamoor, with scimitar uplifted, standing guard at a harem gate. For that I needed a model, and every available model seemed totally inadequate in comparison with the negro of the tenanthouse. Daily I expected him, but he always failed me, and somehow I did not care to go get him. I imagine that it was pure nervousness on my part, but I didn't quite care to stick my head into that hornet's nest again. I wasn't quite sure just which incarnation I should find him in. Meanwhile the picture hung fire, and I went back to sketching.

Then came a certain evening in the beginning of November. I had turned on the big incandescent lights we used for night work, and was trying in their blaze to make a few sketches. I had been scribbling away for a couple of

hours and was becoming quite tired. I yawned, got up, looked around, and recoiled in horrible surprise. There There by the open bay window was the identical negro of the farm-house. I closed my eyes and then looked again. The nightmare figure was still there. Hunched over he was, like a great ape and senselessly swinging his arms, as I had seen him do that other night. His hands were clenching and reclenching, and his eyes were lit with a kind of foolish cunning. That he was now quite mad I never for an instant doubted. How long he had been there, or what particular bit of devil's luck had brought him to me, were questions which my mind was totally unable to grasp, let alone solve,

We stood and stared at each other for what must have been a full minute. Then he took a step forward.

"You goin' to paint," he growled. His voice was hideous, seeming to come not from his throat, but from deep down in his body.

With a tremendous effort, I pulled myself together.

"I can't in this light," I said.

Per

badly

"You paint," he ordered, and came forward a little more, tensed and ready to spring. I could almost feel the grip of those huge hands on my throat. My mind worked furiously. There must be some way out. haps he had done some terrible thing and was even then fleeing. The condition of his clothes supported me in this belief. They were ripped, and the tears appeared to be fresh; besides, he was soaked to the skin as though he had been fording the river. His pursuers might be just behind. If I could only keep the madman in him down-make him somewhat nearer the fawning coward I had seen him to be, until help came! Anything that would occupy his mind. would do.

"Strip and step over there," I said, pointing to the model stand. I was calm by now, with a kind of icy dread, and was giving myself orders, precisely as a general behind the lines sends instructions to his troops at the

87

front. I wondered dimly if he would. obey me. If he obeyed once, he might obey again, and that would be something gained. For just an instant, while my heart stood still, he hesitated and then ripping off his rags, he stepped up on the stand; I had won the first point.

A canvas was strapped on the easel before me, and feverishly I set to work. That scene is forever burned into my memory. If you were to take a knife and rip up that painting, I could do it again just as it was. That huge madman standing up before me like a great black panther, and I painting for my life. I can remember every line of his glistening body, every twist of his dreadful face. I moved the easel slightly so that he could plainly see it, and at the same time I could see him without turning entirely around. I prayed that he might weaken, become again the cur-but there was no sign of it.

Quickly the picture took shape-I wasn't bothering with any preliminary sketching-and I painted that nigger as I saw him, and felt him, and feared him. How long we were there I don't know, but it seemed eternity. He began to grow restless. Color, I thought, might hold him, and I swept my brush in big blue swathes down the canvas. Would help never come! I was painting in a delirious dream when I heard the beat of hoofs outside and a knock at the door.

"Come in, come in!" I screamed. "He's here. He's here!"-and then I hurled myself across the room

"Well," I said, "did they get him?" "Yes," was the reply. "They got him, though he fought like a wildcat. He had been mentally deranged although not actually insane from childhood. To those he feared, he was like a great dog; to the others-well! The little yellow man whom Carter and I had seen that night was Spike Francis, a notorious mulatto gambler. Spike realized the capabilities of this nigger and used him as a bully to terrorize the patrons of his games. He played with fire once too often. The

"The Daughter of the Storage," by

William D. Howells.

Style in literature remains a quality which evades the net of definition. But if it refuses to be ensnared by the critic for the purposes of scientific dissection, yet for the reader its recognition is easy, almost immediate. If it were possible to take up "The Daughter of the Storage, and Other Things in Prose and Verse," quite in ignorance of its authorship, one would instantly recognize the hand of a writer skilled in his craft to an uncommon degree.

Mr. Howells's unchallenged position in the forefront of American letters renders notable any new volume bearing his name. "The Daughter of the Storage," which the Harpers have just published, takes its title from the initial story of a volume in which are gathered all of Mr. Howell's recent unpublished work-short stories of varying degrees of shortness, prose studies, some fugitive verse, and a farce or two, in which the dramatic form usurps the place of narrative as the more suitable vehicle for the author's genial irony and delightful humor.

One is everywhere conscious of a mellowness of art, an urbanity of manner, an acuteness of insight and largeness of heart. Mr. Howells is of that rare company of authors whom we cannot read without feeling that we have been ushered before a distin

"A History of Sculpture," by Harold N. Fowler, Ph. D.

In this book the author gives a history of the art of sculpture from the beginnings of civilization in Egypt and Babylonia to the present day. A single chapter deals with the art of the Far East, because it has developed separate from Western art; the sculpture of American aborigines, of the negro races, and the tribes of Oceania, on account of its lack of intrinsic value, as well as influence, has been omitted. With these exceptions, the author's discussion includes all important developments in the art of sculpture in ancient, medieval and modern times, with such descriptions of individual works and accounts of individual artists as illustrate the main tendencies in artistic history.

The book is profusely illustrated with half-tones from photographs,