“In early February, my husband and I had been in our new house one month—a home lovely beyond telling, perched on a rugged cliff with the ocean for our front yard, wind and sky for neighbors, and seagulls for guests—we were ecstatic.
If you have experienced the joy and woe of building your own home, you know how completely filled with happiness you are and how completely empty your purse is.
A hundred lovely things clamored to be bought for that house, but the one thing we wanted most of all was the most useless—a picture.
Not just any picture, but a wild wonderful scene of the sea dominated by a great white clipper ship. This picture had been in our thoughts all the months of building, and we left one living room wall free of paneling to hold it.
My husband mounted decorative red and green ship lanterns on the wall to frame our picture, but the picture itself would have to wait. Draperies, carpeting—all the practical items must come first. Perhaps so, but that didn’t stop either one of us from ‘seeing’ that picture, in our imagination, on that wall.
“One day, while shopping, I strolled into a small art gallery, and as I walked through the door, I stopped so suddenly a gentleman walking behind me crashed into an easel. I apologized and pointed to a painting hanging at head height across the room.
‘That’s what did it! I’ve never seen anything so wonderful!’
He introduced himself as the owner of the gallery and said, ‘Yes, an original by the greatest English painter of clipper ships the world has known.’
He went on to tell me about the artist, but I wasn’t listening. I could not take my eyes from that wonderful ship; and suddenly I experienced a very strange thing.
It was only a moment in time, but the art gallery faded, and I ‘saw’ that picture on my wall. I’m afraid the owner thought me a little giddy, and I was, but I finally managed to return my attention to his voice when he mentioned an astronomical price.
I smiled and said, ‘Perhaps some day…’
He continued to tell me about the painter and also about an American artist who was the only living lithographer capable of copying the great English master.
He said, ‘If you’re very lucky, you may pick up one of his prints. I’ve seen his work. It’s perfect down to the last detail. Many people prefer prints to paintings.’
‘Prints’ or ‘paintings’, I knew nothing about the values of either, and anyway, all I wanted was that scene.
When my husband returned home that evening, I talked of nothing but that painting and pleaded with him to visit the gallery and see it.
‘Maybe we could find a print of it somewhere. The man said…’
‘Yes’, he interrupted, ‘but you know we can’t afford any picture now…’
Our conversation ended there, but that night after dinner, I stood in our living room and ‘saw’ that picture on our wall.
“The next day, my husband had an appointment with a client which he did not want to keep.
But the appointment was kept, and my husband did not return home until after dark. When he walked through the front door, I was busy in another part of the house and called a greeting to him.
A few minutes later, I heard hammering and walked into the living room to see what he was doing. On our wall hung my picture.
In my first moment of intense joy, I remembered the man in the art gallery, saying… ‘If you’re very lucky, you may pick up one of his prints…’
Lucky? Well, here is my husband’s part of this story:
“Making the call already mentioned, he entered one of the poorest, meanest little houses he had ever been in.
The client introduced himself and led my husband into a tiny dark dining area where the two of them sat down at a bare table.
As my husband put his briefcase on the tabletop, he looked up and saw the picture on a wall. He confessed to me he had conducted a very sloppy interview because he couldn’t take his eyes from that picture.
The client signed the contract and gave a check as down payment, which, as my husband believed at the time, was ten dollars short.
Mentioning this fact to the client, he said the check given was every cent he could afford but added… ‘I’ve noticed your interest in that picture. It was here when I took this place. I don’t know to whom it belonged, but I don’t want it. If you’ll put the ten dollars in for me, I’ll give you the picture.’
“When my husband returned to his company’s main office, he learned he had been in error about the amount. He was not charged ten dollars.
Our picture is on our wall.
“And it costs us nothing.” —A.A.
Story from the book The Law And The Promise
