A poor black paint lay very unhappy in its tube. It had tumbled out of
an artist’s color-box and had lain unnoticed for a year. “I am only
Lampblack,” he said to himself. “The master never looks at me: he says I
am heavy, dull, lusterless, useless. I wish I could cake and dry up and
die, as poor Flakewhite did.”
But Lampblack could not die; he could only lie in his tin tube and pine,
like a silly, sorrowful thing as he was, in company with some broken
bits of charcoal and a rusty palette-knife. The master never touched
him; month after month passed by, and he was never thought of; the other
paints had all their turn of fair fortune, and went out into the world to
great halls and mighty palaces, transfigured and rejoicing in a thousand
beautiful shapes and services. But Lampblack was always passed over as
dull and coarse. Indeed he knew himself to be so, poor fellow, and this
made it all the worse. “You are only a deposit!” said the other colors to
him; and he felt that it was disgraceful to be a deposit, though he was
not quite sure what it meant.
“If only I were happy like the others!” thought poor, sooty Lampblack,
sorrowful in his corner. “There is Bistre, now, he is not so very much
better-looking than I am, and yet they can do nothing without him,
whether it is a girl’s face or a wimple in a river!”
The others were all so happy in this beautiful bright studio, where the
open casements were hung with green myrtle, and where the silence was
filled with the singing of nightingales. Cobalt, with a touch or two,
became the loveliness of summer skies at morning; the Lakes and Carmines
bloomed in a thousand exquisite flowers and fancies; the Chromes and
Ochres (mere dull earths) were allowed to spread themselves in sheets
of gold that took the shine of the sun into the darkest places; Umber,
a somber and gloomy thing, could lurk in a child’s curls and laugh in a
child’s smiles; whilst all the families of the Vermilions, the Blues, the
Greens, lived in a perpetual glory of sunset or sunrise, of ocean waves
or autumn woods, of kingly pageant or of martial pomp.
It was very hard. Poor Lampblack felt as if his very heart would break,
above all when he thought of pretty little Rose Madder, whom he loved
dearly, and who never would even look at him, she was so proud, because
she was always placed in nothing less than rosy clouds, or the hearts of
roses, or something as fair and spiritual.
“I am only a wretched deposit!” sighed Lampblack, and the rusty
palette-knife grumbled back, “My own life has been ruined in cleaning
dirty brushes!”
“But at least you were of use once; but I never am,—never!” said
Lampblack. And indeed he had been there so long that the spiders had spun
their silver fleeces all about him, and he was growing as gray as an old
bottle does in a dark cellar.
At that moment the door of the studio opened, and there came a flood of
light, and the step of a man was heard; the hearts of all the colors
jumped for joy. It was their magician, who out of mere common clays and
ground ores could raise them at a touch into splendors immortal.
Only the heart of poor dusty Lampblack did not beat a throb the more,
because he was always left alone and never was thought worthy of even a
glance. But he could not believe his senses when the master crossed the
floor to the dark corner where he lay under the spiders’ webs. Lampblack
felt sick and faint with rapture. Had his turn come at last?
The master took him up. “You will do for this work,” he said; and
Lampblack was borne trembling to an easel. The colors, for once
neglected, crowded together to watch, looking in their bright tin tubes
like rows of little soldiers in armor.
“It is dull Old Deposit,” they murmured to one another, and felt
contemptuous, but curious, as scornful people often will be.
“I am going to be glorious and great,” thought Lampblack, and his heart
swelled high; for nevermore would they be able to hurl the name of
Deposit at him, a name which hurt all the more because he did not know
what it meant.
“You will do for this work,” said the master, and let Lampblack out of
his metal prison-house into the light and touched him with the brush that
was the wand of magic.
“What am I going to be?” wondered Lampblack, as he felt himself taken on
to a large piece of deal board, so large that he felt he must be going to
make at the least the outline of an athlete or the shadows of a tempest.
He could not tell what he was becoming; but he was happy enough and grand
enough only to be used. He began to dream a thousand things of all the
scenes he would be in, and all the hues that he would wear, and all the
praise that he would hear when he went out into that wonderful world
where his master was so much admired.
But he was harshly roused from his secret dreams; all the colors were
laughing and tittering round him till the little tin helmets they wore
shook with their merriment.
“Old Deposit is going to be a sign-post,” they cried to one another so
merrily that the spiders, who are not companionable creatures, came to
the doors of their dens to chuckle too. A sign-post! Lampblack, stretched
out in joy upon the board, roused himself and gazed at the change. He had
been made into seven letters, thus: