"It's the taste of the people I want to please. I believe in art
as a popular educator, and people can't be educated by things they
won't look at."
"Oh, as to that," Stewart Hubbard rejoined, with a twinkle in his eye,
"conventionality is after all the consensus of the taste of mankind."
Peter Calvin was at a loss to tell whether his friend was in earnest or
was only quizzing Irons, so he contented himself with an appreciative
look, and a smile of dazzling warmth. Irons, on the other hand, looked
toward the speaker with suspicion.
"I haven't much sympathy with a good deal of the stuff artists talk,"
he continued, following his own train of thought. "It doesn't square
very well with common sense and ain't much more than pure gassing, I
think. The truth is, genius is mostly moonshine. The man I call a
genius is the one that makes things work practically."
"In other words," said Calvin, spurred to emulate Hubbard's epigram,
and involuntarily glancing toward the latter for approval, "you think a
genius is a man who is able to harness Pegasus to the plough, and make
him work without kicking things to pieces."
"That's about it," Irons assented; "and I think Herman is too
toploftical and full of cranky theories. They say Mrs. Greyson has hit
the nail exactly on the head in that statue she showed in Paris last
year. That pleased the critics and the public both, and that's exactly
what we are after.
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