He figured mornings given over to
music and painting--his own; and afternoons of studio-rounds, when
fellow-artists would turn him their unfinished canvasses to the light, or
would pull away the clinging sheets from their shapes of dampened clay;
and evenings when the room would thicken with smoke and tall glasses
would make rings on the shining tops of tables, while a dozen agile wits
had their own way with Monet and Bourget and Verlaine. For the rest,
_concerts_, _spectacles_, _bals_; if need be, receptions; or, if pushed
to it, five-o'clock tea--with the chance that one other man might be
present. Thus the winter. As for the summer: "No canoeing, of course, on
the Lahn and the Moselle; I must fall back upon the historic Illinois,
with its immemorial towns and villages and crumbling cathedrals, and the
long line of ancient and picturesque chateaux between Ottawa and Peoria.
No more villeggiatura at Frascati or Fiesole; I shall have to flee from
the summer heats to the wild ravines and gorges of DuPage County--and
raise turnips and cabbages there with the rest of them."
Putting aside for the present all thought of the coming summer, Truesdale
set himself to the formation of a circle. He had gone away as a boy and
had come back as a young man. He had grown beyond his old acquaintances,
he thought, and apart from them--of which last there could be no doubt on
either side; and it struck him that the easiest and simplest thing to do
would be to drop them all and to start afresh.
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