“Look here!” cried the Harvester. “I came with an arm load of herbs and
expected to tell you all about foxglove, mullein, yarrow, jimson,
purple thorn apple, blessed thistle, hemlock, hoarhound, lobelia, and
everything in season now; but if you already have a profession, why do
you attempt a new one? Why don't you go on drawing? I never saw anything
so stupid as most of the designs from nature for book covers and
decorations, leather work and pottery. They are the same old subjects
worked over and over. If you can draw enough to make original copies,
I can furnish you with flowers, vines, birds, and insects, new, unused,
and of exquisite beauty, for every month in the year. I've looked into
the matter a little, because I am rather handy with a knife, and I carve
candlesticks from suitable pieces of wood. I always have trouble getting
my designs copied; securing something new and unusual, never! If you can
draw just well enough to reproduce what you see, gathering drugs is too
slow and tiresome. What you want to do is to reproduce the subjects I
will bring, and I'll buy what I want in my work, and sell the remainder
at the arts and crafts stores for you. Or I can find out what they pay
for such designs at potteries and ceramic factories. You have no time to
spend on herbs, when you are in the woods, if you can draw.”
“I am surely in the woods,” said the Girl, “and I know I can copy
correctly. I often made designs for embroidery and leather for the shop
mother and I worked for in Chicago.”
“Won't they buy them of you now?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Do they pay anything worth while?”
“I don't know how their prices compare with others. One place was all I
worked for. I think they pay what is fair.”
“We will find out,” said the Harvester promptly.
“I----I don't think you need waste the time,” faltered the Girl. “I had
better gather the plants for a while at least.”
“Collecting crude drug material is not easy,” said the Harvester.
“Drawing may not be either, but at least you could sit while you work,
and it should bring you more money. Besides, I very much want a moth
copied for a candlestick I am carving. Won't you draw that for me? I
have some pupae cases and the moths will be out any day now. If I'd
bring you one, wouldn't you just make a copy?”
The Girl gripped her hands together and stared straight ahead of her for
a second, then she turned to him.
“I'd like to,” she said, “but I have nothing to work with. In Chicago
they furnished my material at the shop and I drew the design and was
paid for the pattern. I didn't know there would be a chance for anything
like that here. I haven't even proper pencils.”
“Then the way for you to do this is to strip the first mullein plants
you see of the petals. I will pay you seventy-five cents a pound for
them. By the time you get a few pounds I can have material you need
for drawing here and you can go to work on whatever flowers, vines, and
things you can find in the woods, with no thanks to any one.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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