"Come, drink your wine,
Ned, and we'll have our coffee. It is quite time, I think,--and he used to
be a three-bottle fellow," muttered my dear old friend, _sotto
voce_. "'_Heu, heu! tempora mutantur, et nos_'--well, well, well!"
* * * * *
Clarian's Picture! What a gush of recollection the words evoke! I was in
the heyday and blossom of my youth then, and now--well, 'tis some years
since; yet how vividly I remember that pleasant noontide of a day of early
summer, when, as a party of us students were lounging about the gates that
opened from our shady campus upon the street, "Dennis" handed me a note
from Clarian, in which my little friend announced that his picture was
finished at last, and invited Mac and myself to call and see it
"exhibited," at nine o'clock that very evening. We were talking about
Clarian and his picture, at the time,--as, indeed, we had been doing for a
month,--and when I mentioned the purport of the note, curiosity rose to the
tiptoe of expectation, and numerous surmises were set afloat. I could have
satisfied their queries as to the subject and character of the picture, for
Mac and I had seen it only a few days before, but Clarian expected us to be
secret about it; so I only listened and smiled, while the eager talk ran
on, and a thousand conjectures were hazarded.
"So the _magnum opus_ is finished at last," said Clayt Zoile, showing by
his manner, as he joined us, that he at least had not received an
invitation; "a precious specimen of Art it will prove, I doubt not, after
all the outcry about it.
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