“At this point the Doctor retired and returned gowned in white. He
passed to us a canvas such as is commonly used by painters in oil. He
placed this upon an easel. At his right was a table bearing brushes
and two glasses filled, one with dark blue and the other with white
paint. He then distributed large napkins among those present and
handed to me two balls of absorbent cotton. These I was told to place
over his eyes, and as I did so the two other men and several of the
women bound the napkins over the cotton. They were tied very tightly
and two were crossed. We inspected the bandages and pronounced them
secure. Then the white-robed figure, in this grotesque headgear,
asked me to lead him to an arm-chair in the far end of the rear
apartment, which I did. Seated in the chair, his chin hanging down
upon his breast, he remained for some time, until suddenly he arose
and walked straightway to his wife and child, who were sitting behind
the table in the front room, upon the sofa as previously. He knelt
before them, kissed the little one, his back being toward us the
while. Then he walked directly {268} to my companion and took the
latter’s watch from his pocket without fumbling. He now proceeded
to the easel, and, selecting a brush from the table, dipped into
the blue paint and printed across the top of the canvas ‘Fifteen
Minutes.’ I looked at my companion’s watch and it registered half
past 10. Evidently the words denoted the time in which the picture
was to be painted. One of the women present requested that a
moonlight scene in Thibet be reproduced. Sudden movements of two
brushes, dipped in the two colors, transformed the letters into a
clouded sky through which a moon was bursting. Below was outlined a
sort of tower, to the left of which was painted a tree. After some
detail in the picture was outlined in blue, for example, the white
paint would be applied in lines exactly parallel to the first, and
many such touches of the brushes indicated that the painting was not
made as the result of memory alone. Near the end of the painting the
Doctor again approached his wife and child, leading the latter to the
easel and placing him upon a chair before it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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