The wish grew up with me; but there were no good drawing-
teachers in those days, and if there had been, the cost of
instruction would have been beyond the family means. My sister
Emilie, however, who saw my taste and shared it herself, did her
best to assist me, furnishing me with pencil and paper and
paint-box.
If I could only make a rose bloom on paper, I thought I should be
happy! or if I could at last succeed in drawing the outline of
winter-stripped boughs as I saw them against the sky, it seemed
to me that I should be willing to spend years in trying. I did
try a little, and very often. Jack Frost was my most inspiring
teacher. His sketches on the bedroom window-pane in cold mornings
were my ideal studies of Swiss scenery, crags and peaks and
chalets and fir-trees,--and graceful tracery of ferns, like those
that grew in the woods where we went huckleberrying, all blended
together by his touch of enchantment. I wondered whether human
fingers ever succeeded in imitating that lovely work.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206