§ 168 The Reason the Artist Quit
This is in explanation of why a rather well-known New Yorker gave up free-hand drawing. Although without any artistic training, he rather fancied himself a pretty fair amateur sketch artist.
In company with a newspaper man he was touring Spain. One morning in Malaga the two Americans dropped into a little café for breakfast. They knew no Spanish and their waiter knew no English. Largely by signs they made him understand that they wanted coffee and rolls. But when the newspaperman decided that he wished also a glass of milk difficulties arose.
Singly and in chorus they pronounced the word “milk.” Then they spelled it out. Then they shouted it loudly as one always does, somehow, when using one’s own language, one is dealing with a stranger who doesn’t understand that language. The waiter merely shrugged his shoulders and spread his fingers in a gesture of helplessness.
The man who wanted milk imitated the action of one milking a cow, meanwhile mooing plaintively, and then, to round out the illustration, went through the pantomime of emptying an imaginary glass. Still the waiter stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Hold on,” said the artist, “I’ve got an idea. I can draw about as well as the next one. Lend me a pencil; it won’t take me a minute to make this fellow understand.”
With the pencil, on the table cloth, he sketched rapidly what seemed to him a very graphic likeness of a domestic cow, and, squatted down alongside the cow, his conception of a conventional milkmaid engaged in the act of milking.
As he made the finishing strokes the waiter, who had been watching the operation over his shoulder, burst into a delighted cry of “Sí! Sí! Señor!” and, tucking up his apron, dashed from the restaurant and ran across the street into the shop of a tobacconist.
“Now, then,” said the artist to his friend, “see what a knack with the pencil will do for a fellow when he gets into difficulties in a foreign country? I’ll venture I could go all over the world, making my meaning clear by dashing off these little illustrations.”
“Maybe so,” said the newspaper man, “but why in thunder did the waiter go to a cigar store for milk?”
“Probably a custom of the country,” said the artist. “The main point was that just as soon as he’d had a good look at my drawing he was on his way. He’ll be back here in a minute with your glass of milk.”
The prediction was only partly true. The waiter was back again in a minute or less, but he brought no milk. Triumphantly, he laid down in front of his patrons two tickets for a bull-fight.