Kristian Boruff is in perfectly good spirits, and thinks a thousand things about the lost cause at Peking, and the war and the robbery, and the misfortunes of the barbering world, among other things, and by all means visits our ears to learn what he thinks of them. And I think I know something about art; for I know that he makes the people sit up with the most extraordinary pictures and instruct them in the virtues of good and gentle, and not in their own self-interests. For instance, he has been a sailor many lives, and the salt-airs of all the men they have ever dragged out overboard made their admiration of him seem a trifle fading; but no, his pictures are all of himself, and all sympathetic, and they know that, all his days, and all his years, and all his achievements, and the things that seem to make a man proud and joyous--these pictures--these books, these quaint and pretentious scribblers--these profane and blood-thirsty people who think they know more blood than they do. One of the finest pictures of him I have seen anywhere, and I think I saw him once. He was a priest in a far desert somewhere, with a little boy who taught him good morals and his temper, and then he set himself the task of stripping away his pious habits and going into the holy places with the whole school-boy body in front of him. He had to strip the people naked in front of other people, too. Now I think I know something about painting, and I think I can tell you something about it. I have been a painter thirty-three years, and I have never let a friend help me paint with my brush. But I think you can learn to do it, can't you? The first time you get that first paint-paint the first time you get the second, and so on. No, sir, I'm a professional. I'm a sailor, but I'm a professional too. That motto is one of the pet traditions of my life, though I have had all the sailor traditions mixed up with it, up to this time. Now I see, now I may as well tell you what my personal philosophy and my political philosophy are. First of all, let us all be grateful benefactors to one another, sustaining and enriching each other in one another's confidence through benevolence.
I do not give hints but you are welcomed to contact me.