Besides, every Saturday night I
will bring here a band of my comrades who pay in good hard silver.
Remember that if you had bought a Corot for twenty francs in 1870, you
could have sold it for five thousand francs in 1880, fifty thousand in
1890. Does the idea appeal to you?"
But as most keepers of restaurants are practical and unimaginative, and
withal close bargainers, at the end of a week Rantoul generally was
forced to seek a new sitter.
"What a privilege it is to be poor!" he would then exclaim
enthusiastically to Herkimer. "It awakens all the perceptions; hunger
makes the eye keener. I can see colors to-day that I never saw before.
And to think that if Sherman had never gotten it in his head to march to
the sea I should never have experienced this inspiration! But, old
fellow, we have so short a time to be poor. We must exhibit nothing yet.
We are lucky. We are poor. We can feel."
On the subject of traditions he was at his best.
"Shakspere is the curse of the English drama," he would declare, with a
descending gesture which caused all the little glasses to rattle their
alarm.
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