IV
THE DAY RESURGENT
I CAN see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number.
First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known model, will pose for it in the “Lethergogallagher,” or whatever it was that Trilby called it.
Second—the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
Third—Miss Manhattan in Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
Fourth—Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the higher criticism has hard-boiled them.
The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that