"Your charge against Mr. Barker, the artist here," said the
magistrate, "is assault and battery, I believe?"
"Yes, sir."
"And your name is----"
"Potts! I am art critic of the _Weekly Spy_."
"State your case."
"I called at Mr. Barker's studio upon his invitation to see his great
picture, just finished, of 'George Washington cutting down the
cherry-tree with his hatchet.' Mr. Barker was expecting to sell it to
Congress for fifty thousand dollars. He asked me what I thought of
it, and after I had pointed out his mistake in making the handle of
the hatchet twice as thick as the tree, and in turning the head of
the hatchet around, so that George was cutting the tree down with the
hammer end, I asked him why he foreshortened George's leg so as to
make it look as if his left foot was upon the mountain on the other
side of the river."
"Did Mr. Barker take it kindly?" asked the justice.
"Well, he looked a little glum--that's all. And then when I asked him
why he put a guinea-pig up in the tree, and why he painted the
guinea-pig with horns, he said it was not a guinea-pig but a cow; and
that it was not in the tree, but in the background. Then I said that,
if I had been painting George Washington, I should not have given him
the complexion of a salmon-brick, I should not have given him two
thumbs on each hand, and I should have tried not to slue his right
eye around so that he could see around the back of his head to his
left ear. And Barker said, 'Oh, wouldn't you?' Sarcastic, your
honour. And I said, 'No, I wouldn't'; and I wouldn't have painted
oak-leaves on a cherry-tree; and I wouldn't have left the spectator
in doubt as to whether the figure off by the woods was a factory
chimney, or a steamboat, or George Washington's father taking a
smoke."
"Which was it?" asked the magistrate.
"I don't know. Nobody will ever know. So Barker asked me what I'd
advise him to do. And I told him I thought his best chance was to
abandon the Washington idea, and to fix the thing up somehow to
represent 'The Boy who stood on the Burning Deck.' I told him he
might paint the grass red to represent the flames, and daub over the
tree so's it would look like the mast, and pull George's foot to this
side of the river so's it would rest somewhere on the burning deck,
and maybe he might reconstruct the factory chimney, or whatever it
was, and make it the captain, while he could arrange the guinea-pig
to do for the captain's dog."
"Did he agree?"
"He said the idea didn't strike him. So then I suggested that he
might turn it into Columbus discovering America. Let George stand for
Columbus, and the tree be turned into a native, and the hatchet made
to answer for a flag, while the mountain in the background would
answer for the rolling billows of the ocean. He said he'd be hanged
if it should. So I mentioned that it might perhaps pass for the
execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Put George in black for the
headsman, bend over the tree and put a frock on it for Mary, let the
hatchet stand, and work in the guinea-pig and the factory chimney as
mourners. Just as I had got the words out of my mouth, Barker knocked
me clean through the picture. My head tore out Washington's near leg,
and my right foot carried away about four miles of the river. We had
it over and over on the floor for a while, and finally Barker
whipped. I am going to take the law of him in the interests of
justice and high art."
So Barker was bound over, and Mr. Potts went down to the office of
the _Spy_ to write up his criticism.