He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility of a real kind.
As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he recalled the day
eleven years before when he had worn brass-toed boots, and he had caught
Junia in his arms and kissed her, and Denzil had had his accident. Denzil
had got unreasonably old since then; but Junia remained as she was the
joyous day when boyhood took on the first dreams of manhood.
Life was a queer thing, and he had not yet got his bearings in it. He had
a desire to reform the world and he wanted to be a great painter or
sculptor, or both; and he entered New York with a new sense developed. He
was keen to see, to do, and to feel. He wanted to make the world ring
with his name and fame, yet he wanted to do the world good also, if he
could. It was a curious state of mind for the English boy, who talked
French like a native and loved French literature and the French people,
and was angry with those English-Canadians who were so selfish they would
never learn French.
Arrived in New York he took lodgings near old Washington Square, where
there were a few studios near the Bohemian restaurants and a life as
nearly continental as was possible in a new country. He got in touch with
a few artists and began to paint, doing little scenes in the Bowery and
of the night-life of New York, and visiting the Hudson River and Long
Island for landscape and seascape sketches.
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