A MAN who had accompanied an artist around his studio, admiring his pictures, exclaimed,

“What an easy and privileged life is yours, calling forth and putting into visible shape such beautiful forms from day to day! You give delight to others, it is true, but surely the largest share must remain for yourself.”

Said the artist,

“Name to me some object in nature that you admire.”

“This rose,” replied the other, “which you have placed as a model on your table.”

“We will take that,” said the artist. “Now, what is its history? First, the parent slip was laid in the ground, and at once began its struggle for life. It put forth tender roots, doubtful of the result, but the soil received them kindly, and it lived. Then the tiny stalk appeared above, and at length an embryo bud. But suppose the sun had scorched this bud or the storm destroyed it? They destroyed many another, yet it was spared, and at last opened in full bloom as you see it here.

“Now, if the plant that bore it could speak, what would it say? Something like this: ‘The rose you admire did not spring up uncalled, like a beautiful thought, but is the result of slow development. I could not but labor to bring it forth, for such was the work appointed me. But the throes of effort were needed, and, now that it is perfected, my delight is not in looking at it as a brilliant flower, but as the fruit of my labor, hoping it may fill its place among beautiful things and accomplish that for which it was called into being.’

“So, my friend,” continued the artist, turning to his companion, “if you think that these pictured forms which you delight in were of easy creation, springing up spontaneous like a passing emotion, you have in what the flowers says my answer.”

Each beautiful work costs labor, but how much only he knows whose hands have formed it.