SOURCE: "A Writing Illustrator," in Careers in the Making: Modern Americans When They Were Young—and on Their Way, edited by Iona M. R. Logie, MA., Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1931, pp. 83-99.

In the following essay, Abbott recounts Pyle's early career as a magazine illustrator.

Since Howard was . . . old enough [in 1861] to gain something by a little study, his parents sent him to school—first to the old Friends' School and then to Clark and Taylor's. Here, by his own confession, he was far more interested in drawing pictures on his slate or in the margins of his books, than he was in the intricacies of grammar or arithmetic. He continued to go for a number of years, but the training received at the hands of his mother during these same years was to prove far more valuable than that given by schools. One of the books to which...