Stranger in a Strange Land

Boss."
                "Well, tell him to try again. We'll get him on the next pass."
                "Looks like Ben Caxton."
                "So it is. We'll let him live-this time. Hi, Ben! What'll you drink?"
                "Nothing, this early in the day, you professional bad influence. Need to talk to you, Jubal."
                "You're doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he's sick."
                "Without too much soda," amended Ben, "and milk the bottle with the three dimples in it. Private talk, Jubal."
                "All right, up to my study-although if you think you can keep anything from the kids around here, let me in on your method." After Ben finished greeting properly (and somewhat unsanitarily, in three cases) the members of the family, they moseyed upstairs.
                Ben said, "What the deuce? Am I lost?"
                "Oh. You haven't seen the alterations, have you? A new wing on the north, which gives us two more bedrooms and another bath downstairs- and up here, my gallery."
                "Enough statues to fill a graveyard!"
                "Please, Ben. 'Statues' are dead politicians at boulevard intersections. What you see is 'sculpture.' And please speak in a low, reverent tone lest I become violent . . . for here we have exact replicas of some of the greatest sculpture this naughty globe has produced."
                "Well, that hideous thing I've seen before ... but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?"
                Jubal ignored him and spoke quietly to the replica of La Belle Heaulmière. "Do not listen to him, ma petite chere-he is a barbarian and knows no better." He put his hand to her beautiful raaged cheek, then gently touched one empty, shrunken dug. "I know just how you feel but it can't be very much longer. Patience, my lovely."
                He turned back to Caxton and said briskly, "Ben, I don't know what you have on your mind but it will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture-though it's probably as useless as trying to teach a dog to appreciate the violin. But you've just been rude to a lady and I don't tolerate that."
                "Huh? Don't be silly, Jubal; you're rude to ladies-live ones-a dozen times a day. And you know which ones I mean."
                Jubal shouted, "Anne! Upstairs! Wear your cloak!"
                "You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. Never. What I can't understand is a so-called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin . . . and you having the bad taste to want it around."
                Anne came in, cloaked, said nothing. Jubal said to her, "Anne have I ever been rude to you? Or to any of the girls?"
                "That calls for an opinion."
                "That's what I'm asking for. Your opinion. You're not in court-"
                "You have never at any time been rude to any of us, Jubal."
                "Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?"
                "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady."
                "That's all. No, one more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?"
                Anne looked carefully at Rodin's masterpiece, then said slowly, "When I first saw it, I thought it was horrible. But I have come to the conclusion that it may be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
                "Thanks. That's all." She left. "Do you want to argue it, Ben?"
                "Huh? When I argue with Anne, that's the day I turn in my suit." Ben looked at it. "But I don't get it."
                "All right, Ben. Attend me. Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned