The Veiled Lady

uel Epigastric Joplin, his brother painters called him. "You treat your s

ricature of a

anity, Marny, and it's vulgar. No man's epigastric can stand it. It wouldn't make any difference if you were

far as I can find out, since you were born. You drank sterilized milk at blood temperature until you were five; chewed patent, unhulled wheat bread until you

hman nodde

you, Joppy, instead

erjected Joplin with a laugh,

so lonely is it for something warm and digestible to rub up against, and your- Why, Joppy, do you know when I look at you and think over your wasted life, my eyes fill with tears? Eat something solid, old man, and give your stomach a surprise. Begin now. Dinner's coming up-I smell it. Open your port nostril

in church since-and walked straight over to the Holland Arms. Johann now fights the steamboat captain, backed not only by the landlord of the Arms, who rubs his hands in glee over the possession of two of his competitor's best servants, but by the whole coterie of painters whose boots Johann blacks, whose kits be packs and unpacks, whose errands he runs; while Tine, no less loyal and obliging, darns their stockings, mends their clothes, sews

an-over front and moss-covered, sloping-roof sort of an inn, with big beams supporting the ceilings of the bedrooms; lumbering furniture blackened with the smoke of a thousand pipes flanking the walls of the coffee-room; bits of Delft a century old lining the mantel; tiny panes of glass with here and

of the Bellevue nor any other landlord in any other hostelry, great or small, up and

antel holding the Delft, and between the squat windows-are pinned, tacked, pasted and hung-singly and in groups-sketches in oil, pastel, water color, pencil and charcoal, many without frames and most of them bearing the signature of some poor, st

es in the marshes turn pale with fright, and the lace-frost with busy fingers pattern the tiny panes, and then Johann would pack the kits one after another, and the last good-byes take place. But the sketches would remain. Oh! yes, the sketches would remain and tell the sto

owes its survival to a square of canvas-the head of a child, a copper pot, or stretch of dune; and more than one collector now boasts of a ma

dditions to the impecunious

ssed over one shoulder, and rusty velveteen coat, was an old habitue. And so was dry, crusty Malone, "the man from Dublin," rough outside as a potato and white inside as its meal.

en sketching on board some lord's yacht-he of the grizzly brown beard, brown ulster reaching to his toes, g

his hand to Marny. "I've got a letter in

k to the old Gate of William of Orange, introducing him to every painter he met on the way, first as Pudfut, then as Puddy, then as Pretty-foot, then as Tootsie-Wootsie, and last

ingers in the lad's forelock to make sure that it was still fast. Schonholz had passed a year at Heidelberg and carried his diploma on his cheek-two crisscross slashes that had never healed-spoke battered English, wore a green flat-topped cap, and gray bobtailed coat with two rows of ho

in his habits: hot water when he got up-two glasses, sipped slowly; cold water when he went to bed, head first, feet next, then the rest of him; window open all night no matter how hard it blew or rained; ate three meals a day and no more; che

like my old Aunt Margaret's wrapper," whispered Marny in a stage voice to Pudfut); sported a ninety-nine-cent silver watch fastened to a leather strap (sometimes to a piece of twine); stuck a five-hundred-dollar scarab pin in his necktie-"Nothing finer in the Boston Museum," he maintained, and told the truth-and eve

never slights his first syllable; says 'HUmor' with an accent on the 'HU.' But for the fact that he pronounces 'bonnet' 'BUNNIT' and 'admires'

trast to the modern "half-tone" methods-any opinion of Joplin's, no matter how sane or logical, was jostled, sat on, punched in the ribs and otherwise maltreated until every man was breathless or black in the face with assumed rage-every

s connected with the temporary relief of the lower button of his waistcoat had excited the great

d necessary to nourish the human body, you would know that it should combine in proper proportions proteid, fats, carbohydrates and a sma

!" bawled Pudfut from th

ped in his fingers, an expression of the

ss of non-nitrogenous fats, and in order to digest anything properly you must necessarily cram in an additional quantity of carbohydrates-greens, potatoes, cabbage-whatever Tin

chonholz's shirt-front and fell into Stebbins's lap, followed instantly by "Order, gentlemen!" from Marny

rumbs from his plate. "Bread-fresh bread particularly-

"I s'pose ye'd rob us of the only thing tha

ess. What you require is about one hundred grams of protein, giving you a fuel value of twenty-seven hundred calories, and to produce this fifty-five ounces of food a day is enough. When you exceed this you run to flesh-unhealthy bloat really-and in the wrong places. You've only to look at Marny's sixty-inch waist-line to prove the truth of this theory. Now look at me-I keep my figure, don't I? No

pewter mug in hand, and swe

l; drink is what we want. On yer feet, gintlemen-every mother's son of ye! Here's to the