Refuge for Mediocrity

‘DROP a penny here for the artist,’ a small placard begged. Being modest, the request was drawing dimes and nickels in generous quantities from the sobered passers-by who watched the man in the torn coat-sleeves. He was working away briskly at Lincoln’s nose when the ferry-boat landed me near the crowd. It was the last of his sculpture in the sand — an exhibit that began at the river’s edge and stretched up to the levee. There was a baby’s face, with an immense wailing mouth, which he had labeled ‘For Newlyweds.’ Next to it was a small boy fishing in a little pool that floated a lily-pad with a tiny frog on it. The boy’s discarded stockings were tucked into his sand shoes — shoes with tiny sand buttons. Next to the urchin, the man had laid down a young mother and child on the shore, their garments long graceful waves of sand.

The artist’s tools were two long gray wooden knives with which he flattened and creased the sand, cut the caverns, and patted the smooth surfaces. Sand and water and wooden knives were all he needed. The river brought him the first two, the knives came out of his coat-pocket. The sky was his skylight; he had north light a-plenty and east, west, and south light to boot. A silent crowd shut him in from the street and river traffic.

The man worked silently, and no one talked to him as they rattled their nickels on the oilcloth spread to receive art’s reward. Some one near me — a woman — wondered why he did not get ‘real work with a grave-stone company.’ Bah! It is better to build in sand if you merely have that modicum of talent which knows how near it lies to mediocrity! The kindly water makes the work merely a memory, and so transitory a thing can never awaken horror, even in the informed. Think of the range of river, lake, and ocean shore that stretches about the globe awaiting such adorning; the millions of children waiting to be struck dumb by a single flashing glimpse of creation, bare-faced, inutile! Skies are waiting, and kind waters sweep the sand to the artist’s feet. One might get the sign in Chinese or French or Syrian and know the rivers of the world, walking alone and reverenced for the moment of wonder in your finger-tips to arrest all humanity.

Peach-blossom marble, enduring granite? Make my tomb-stone by the shore, a rhythm of clothy sand upon my outstretched effigy, and when the friendly rain comes, the sand will run back again to the level of the shore. Let my mourners go, not to my Yalelocked vault, but to the river-side where the man in the torn coat-sleeves can heap my image high, patting it into temporary semblance. He may lay at my feet a wreath of sand and a rope and anchor, and make a lithe little dog of sand to hold the rope between his teeth, and be a marvel to the little boys and girls who count his toes.