The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IStillman, William James
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The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
But Miss A. still sat unmoved and helpless, so we waited. Presently
she remarked that the influence wanted her to do something, she knew
not what, only that she had to get up and go across the room, which
she did with the feeble step of an old man. She crossed the room and
took down from the wall a colored French lithograph, and, coming to
me, laid it on the table before me, and by gesture called my attention
to it. She then went through the pantomime of stretching a sheet of
paper on a drawing-board, then that of sharpening a lead pencil,
following it up by tracing the outlines of the subject in the
lithograph. Then followed in similar pantomime the choosing of a
water-color pencil, noting carefully the necessary fineness of the
point, and then the washing-in of a drawing, broadly. Miss A. seemed
much amused by all this, but as she knew nothing of drawing she
understood nothing of it. Then with the pencil and her pocket
handkerchief she began taking out the lights, "rubbing-out," as the
technical term is. This seemed to me so contrary to what I conceived
to be the execution of Turner that I interrupted with the question,
"Do you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lights?" to which she
gave the affirmative sign. I asked further if in a drawing which I
then had in my mind, the well-known "Llanthony Abbey," the central
passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way, and
she again gave the affirmative reply, emphatically. I was so firmly
convinced to the contrary that I was now persuaded that there was a
simulation of personality, such as was generally the case with the
public mediums, and I said to my brother, who had not heard any of my
questions, that this was another humbug, and then repeated what had
passed, saying that Turner could not have worked in that way. After
this I did not care to follow the conversation further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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