one of his father’s discarded Templar swords, and pose before the long mirrors ranting and scowling.  At another time he would devote his attention to literature, making up endless stories with which he terrified himself, telling them to himself in a low voice for hours after he had got into bed.  Sometimes he would write out these stories and read them to his father after supper, standing up between the folding doors of the library, acting out the whole narrative with furious gestures.  Once he even wrote a little poem which seriously disturbed the Old Gentleman, filling him with formless ideas and vague hopes for the future.

In a suitable environment Vandover might easily have become an author, actor or musician, since it was evident that he possessed the fundamental afflatus that underlies all branches of art.  As it was, the merest chance decided his career.

In the same library where he had found the famous encyclopaedia article was “A Home Book of Art,” one of those showily bound gift books one sees lying about conspicuously on parlour centre tables.  It was an English publication calculated to meet popular and general demand.  There were a great many full-page pictures of lonely women, called “Reveries” or “Idylls,” ideal “Heads” of gipsy girls, of coquettes, and heads of little girls crowned with cherries and illustrative of such titles as “Spring,” “Youth,” “Innocence.”  Besides these were sentimental pictures, as, for instance, one entitled “It Might Have Been,” a sad-eyed girl, with long hair, musing over a miniature portrait, and another especially impressive which represented a handsomely dressed woman flung upon a Louis Quinze sofa, weeping, her hands clasped over her head.  She was alone; it was twilight; on the floor was a heap of opened letters.  The picture was called “Memories.”

Vandover thought this last a wonderful work of art and made a hideous copy of it with very soft pencils.  He was so pleased with it that he copied another one of the pictures and then another.  By and by he had copied almost all of them.  His father gave him a dollar and Vandover began to add to his usual evening petition the prayer that he might become a great artist.  Thus it was that his career was decided upon.

He was allowed to have a drawing teacher.  This was an elderly German, an immense old fellow, who wore a wig and breathed loudly through his nose.  His voice was like a trumpet and he walked with a great striding gait like a colonel of cavalry.  Besides drawing he taught ornamental writing and engrossing.  With a dozen curved and flowing strokes of an ordinary writing pen he could draw upon a calling card a conventionalized outline-picture of some kind of dove or bird of paradise, all curves and curlicues, flying very gracefully and carrying in its beak a half-open scroll upon which could be inscribed such sentiments as “From a Friend” or “With Fond Regards,” or even one’s own name.