Local art was at a discount in
California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather
it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, to make
it so; and people cared little for the reproduction, under their very
noses, of that which they saw continually with their own eyes, and
valued not. So that little Mistress Carmen was fain to divert her
artist soul to support her plump little material body; and made
divers excursions into the regions of ceramic art, painting on velvet,
illuminating missals, decorating china, and the like. I have in my
possession some wax flowers--a startling fuchsia and a bewildering
dahlia--sold for a mere pittance by this little lady, whose pictures
lately took the prize at a foreign exhibition, shortly after she had
been half starved by a California public, and claimed by a California
press as its fostered child of genius.
Of these struggles and triumphs Thatcher had no knowledge; yet he was
perhaps more startled than he would own to himself when, one December
day, he received this despatch: "Come to Washington at once.
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