When artists sell their souls, brains, and talents to dealers, engaging to deliver so many works of art in so many months, on such and such a class of subjects, bargaining by the wholesale for the work which they shall produce during the coming twelve-month, what wonder that the cry of the connoisseur is, Too much technique, too little sentiment! "What is sentiment?" one would ask such a babbler; is it a thing to be measured off by the yard, or sold in canvases to suit traders, who feel the pulse of the public, and if it is feverish give more stimulant, or if it is fainting prescribe an anodyne? To such prostitution do these men strive to degrade the arts, but in vain. Apollo’s voice is still stronger than the chink of doubloons; and there are those whose ears are ever strained to catch his mystic music. The art trade, the literary trade, may flourish luxuriantly, growing like weeds, with a rank prodigality; but the flowers of art and literature, for all that, stand serenely strong in the garden of our fair young world, growing day by day in beauty and strength. Their blossoming may be rare in this day and generation, but the plants are sound and full of a mighty sap. Though John Graham was a man of the world, there was no taint of worldliness about him; he knew the world, because he had lived somewhat in it, but more, perhaps, because he had studied the lives of the world’s people. The painting of a picture was to him of more importance than its sale; the conception of a work more than its accomplishment. His enthusiasm was apt to wane as his picture neared completion. The great glow with which the idea came to him kept him warm and interested through all the stages of the crystallization of his thought; but when the work was finished he ceased to prize it, and either threw himself into a new composition, or patiently labored at uninteresting mechanical work until he was again inspired. It was with difficulty that he could be induced to sell his pictures; he would sometimes keep them before him for years, waiting to alter some detail or to remedy some defect. His friends, knowing his reluctance to part with them, were wont to wait till they knew the artist to be in absolute need of funds, and then quietly to walk away with the coveted picture, forcing him to accept its price. A few people only in California understood or cared for his landscapes, or the rare works of imagination which he produced; and it was through his portraits that he was chiefly known. He felt in himself an unfitness for this line of work; and had it not been for the sake of his beloved mother, partially dependent on him, it is not likely that he would ever have followed it. The reason was not far to seek why. Graham did not succeed in that important branch of art: the individual had little interest for him; men and women absorbed him less than nature. Every tree and brooklet, dead forest leaf or purpled thunder-cloud, held for him a lesson.