One fine afternoon, I, Tara the Turtle, was lazily swimming through my beloved coral reef. I adored discovering all the different houses my fishy friends lived in and admired the withiosculpturous growth of the corals themselves as they sheltered multi-hued sea-fans. At the same time, I loved the many colors the corals changed into and the pretty pearl-like formations, but there was always one color that I couldn’t touch. That was the pinkish-red color that the most beautiful of all the corals, the brain coral, wore. I longed so to make a home amid its rolling hills and mildew valleys, and I loved to see them sway gently when another tortoise glided past. It was like a lovely meadow of soft grass waves beneath a gentle wind.
Beneath this coral was just the color I longed for, so the next day I ambled up to the rosy reefs and broke off just a tiny piece of brain coral. Then I dropped down below the sea and mixed the pretty pink with some malachite-green and a bit of lapis-lazuli, so that I had enough beautiful pigments to paint a lovely colored picture.
With a small piece of the hardest rock that I had ever seen, I dipped it in the colors and began painting one of the cliffs just near my home. But no sooner had I finished my first picture than who should come floating up but Poupoule the Puffer! I was so frightened at the thought of him finding out my secret that I hastily pushed the cliff-dwelling and my paint away from close to my hiding-hole and rolled over to see if he had discovered anything.
He kept racing backward and forward after the fishes and all the time I was expecting him to pelt up to tell me that he had seen what was in my hole. Luckily enough, nothing happened and at last he reluctantly swam back home. I then spent all that afternoon painting several pictures, and I repeated the trisking the following day and the next, until all the rocks close to my cave were fully covered. I thought I was doing the greatest wonders, but to look at my canvases properly, I was obliged to come above the water-level.
One morning I had completely forgotten myself, and when I looked up, lo! what should I see before me with his green googly eyes and wide open mouth but Cuthbert the Crab.
“By all that’s blue!” cried he, in his crab-like way, “but this is sublime! Why do you stay languishing down here when you could give pointers to the greatest of artists up on shore?”
“But I don’t want to come ashore,” said I simply, for I had no ambition to be considered a wonder-working artist.
And yet I was flattered at his praise, and, so to say, unbeknownst to myself, began painting rock canvases of larger size than before.
“Heigh-ho!” panted Squeezum the Squid one day as he was floating past, “why don’t you some day think of giving an exhibition? I himself would be glad to open it!”
“What really are you talking about?” I asked.
“Why, your pictures, of course,” said he. “Don’t you know that you have painted the most wondrous spectacles and give pleasure to entire crowds of fishes who flock here from hundreds of miles on to see your canvases?”
This opened my eyes. Of course I had never gone except near to my hiding-hole lest Poupoule the Puffer should talk. But having watched the fishes serving to move my canvases on many occasions, I did not like to think that they had come to behold an artistic exhibition, constructed for their pleasure, without informing me what they had come for! I could not help feeling hurt at their want of courtesy.
That very afternoon I made up my mind to give an exhibition of my paintings and sent Cuthbert the Crab to announce the coming event to all my dear friends and acquaintances in the vicinity of my coral reef.
Newspaper headlines announced the inaugural exhibit of Tara the Turtle “Turtle paint rocks,” showed awards of certificates of merit to Coral Trout, Silver Snapper, and Trunk Fish three of the best artists in marine zoology, and described each painting in detail, while one transcendental and enthusiastic critic remarked that “the turtle while swimming purposefully up and down did not show sufficient emotion in his delicate and inventive work, although we can see even in him an intelligent appreciation of color harmony and picturesqueness.”
The next day I received visits from all my clients with suitable gifts, but the bottom of the ocean is always in a bad state of cleanliness in tells of its inhabitants’ manner of life would last for weeks.