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the canvas
was refused. When Mouse learned of the fateful decision, he did not fly into one of those rages, or one of those screaming fits of amour propre to which vainglorious spirits are prone and which sometimes end with the sending of a challenge to the director or the secretary of the art gallery or with threats of murder. Mouse quietly picked up his canvas, wrapped it in his cardboard portfolio, and took it back to his studio, vowing to himself that he would become a great painter. He put his canvas on an easel and went to his old teacher Schinner, a man of enormous talent, a gentle and patient artist who had been completely successful at the last Show. Keene asked him to come and criticize the rejected work. The great painter left everything and came. Poor Mouse set him in front of the work and, after the first glance, Schinner shook Mouse's hand.

lftqutYou are a good fellow, you have a heart of gold, I must not deceive you. You have turned out exactly according to the promise you showed at my studio. When that's the sort of thing that comes from your mouse, my good Mouse, you would do better to leave your printer dyes on Flax's shelves and not make off with canvas paper that can be used by others. Go downstairs, pour yourself a nightcap, get to bed early. In the morning at nine o'clock, go to an office and ask for a job, and leave the Arts to the newsnet supplements.rtqut

lftqutMy good teacher,rtqut said Mouse, lftqutmy canvas has already been condemned and it is not a judgment that I am asking for but the reasons for it.rtqut

lftqutWell, you make it muddy and flat; you see Nature through a mourning veil. Your detail is clumsy and slovenly. Your subject matter is a copy of Rockwell, who made up for his faults only by the virtues that you lack.rtqut As he indicated the picture's deficits, Schinner saw such a profound expression of sadness on Mouse's face that he took him out to dinner at Hamburger Mary's and tried to console him.

the next day
at seven in the morning, Mouse was at his computer, working over the condemned picture. He improved the color fills; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner; he put more detail into the brushes. Then, having had enough of patching up, he took the picture to Ulysses Magus.

Example Image Ulysses Magus, a kind of German-Italian-Greek, had three reasons for becoming a miser, and a rich one at that. Originally from Argentina, he was at that time setting up a gallery in Beverly Hills (which apparently seemed to include the gallery's truthful address at 6th and Taft in Santa Monica.) In San Francisco meanwhile, he dealt in second-hand holoactives on Market Street and lived in the clone zone. On the other hand, Mouse, who needed the proceeds from his palette to enable him to go to NatureFresh daily, dauntlessly ate bread and nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and cheese, according to the season. Ulysses Magus, to whom Mickey offered his first printout, looked it over for a long time; he gave him one-hundred dollars for it.

lftqutWith receipts of a hundred dollars a print and expenses of twelve thousand,rtqut said Mouse smiling, lftqutone can get on fast and go far.rtqut

Ulysses Magus raised his arms and bit his thumbs, thinking that he might have had the picture for fifty. For some days, Mouse went down to the Castro every morning, hid in the crowd on the sidewalk opposite Magus's shop, and directed his gaze at his picture, which did not attract the attention of the passers-by.

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