“Did you know there was a native artist here?” said John, calling up one morning as he sat on the balcony, Sara and myself endeavoring to write duty letters.
“Painter or sculptor?” I inquired, pen in hand, pausing over an elaborate description of a sunset with which I was favoring a soul-to-soul correspondent. “Let me see: standing on the glacis with the look-out tower outlined against--”
“Sculptor,” answered John. “His studio is on Charlotte Street not far from here. Let us walk down and see him.”
“Look-out tower outlined against the golden after-glow. Is it worth going to see?”
“Indeed it is. There is a fine design--a lion carved in stone, and also a full-length figure of Henry Clay walking in the gardens of Ashland; and what is more, these statues are on top of the house outlined against--”
“Certainly,” said John. “And inside you will find rare antique vases, Egyptian crocodiles, Grecian caskets, and other remarkable works, all executed in stone.”
“I have long craved an alligator, but could not undertake the cigar-box discipline,” I answered, rising. “A crocodile carved in stone will be just the thing. Come, Sara.”
We walked down Charlotte Street, and presently came to a small house with a low wing, whose open shutter showed the studio within. On the roof were two figures in coquina, one a nondescript animal like the cattle of a Noah’s ark, the other a little stone man who seemed to have been so dwarfed by the weight of his hat that he never smiled again.
“The lion, and Henry Clay,” said John, introducing the figures.
“Passé for the lion; but how do you make out the other?”
“Oh, Henry seems to be the beau ideal of the South. You meet him every where on the way down in a plaster and marble dress-coat, extending his hand in a conversational manner, and so, of course, I supposed this to be another one. And as to the gardens of Ashland, as he has his hat on--indeed, he is principally hat--he must be taking a walk somewhere, and where so likely as his own bucolic garden?”
“I shall go back to my after-glow, Mr. Hoffman. Your Henry Clay is a fraud.”
“Wait and see the artist, Martha,” said Sara. “He is a colored man and a cripple.”
We tapped on the shutter, and the artist appeared, supporting himself on crutches; a young negro, with a cheerful shining countenance, and an evident pride in the specimens of his skill scattered about the floorless studio--alligators, boxes, roughly cut vases, all made of the native coquina; or, as the artist’s sign had it,