These persons we
are inclined to class among those zealous but unthinking lovers of
simplicity, whose misdirected reformatory efforts in other departments
of life are so well known. As might be expected, Bill treats these
sacrilegious innovators with the contempt they so justly merit. Were
an officious stranger to try to convince an artist that one color
would answer all his purposes as well as a greater number, would the
suggestion of the untutored interloper cause the artist to waver in
the sternness of his faith? And shall the subject of this sketch
revolutionize his mode of stove-blacking at the promptings of an
untaught spectator?
It would be by no means surprising if such nicety of execution as that
to which we have alluded tended to draw his attention from rhetorical
themes. Yet, spite of this apparently necessary result, some of his
grandest and most startling flights of oratory have had their
inspiration from incidents connected with stove-nigrification. Bill
has, as it were, soared on the legs of the stove, like Perseus on
Mercury's sandals, to unexplored realms of space and thought.
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