A UNIQUE EXPERIMENT WITH A HORSE.
“I do not believe,” said he, “in working from an anatomical figure, or in covering a horse with skin and hair after you have laid in his muscles. You are apt to make prominent muscles which are not really prominent. Once I soaked a horse with water, and took photographs of him, to make a record of the muscles and tendons that really show. They are practically few, except when in active use. In an art school you learn little about a horse. The way which I approve is to place a horse before you, study him and know him, and work till you have reproduced him. No master, standing over your shoulder, can teach you more than you can observe, if you have the soul. Corot took his easel into the woods, and studied close to nature, till he painted truthfully a landscape. Angelo’s best work was that done to suit his personal view.
“Talent may be born, but it depends upon your own efforts whether it comes to much. I believe that if your hobby, desire, or talent, whichever you wish to call it, is to paint or model, you can teach yourself better than you can be taught, providing you really love your work, as I do.”
Thus did Mr. Shrady desert a mechanical life he disliked, and start on a promising career. He is still young, slight, and with delicate features. His heart is tender toward animals, and he refuses to hunt. His chief delight is in riding the horse which has figured so prominently in his work. His success proves two things: the value of leisure moments, and the wisdom of turning a hobby into a career.
XXXVII
Deformed in Body, His Cheerful Spirit Makes Him the Entertainer of Princes.
A SCORE of years ago, seated on a bench in Bryant Park, a hungry lad wept copious tears over his failure to gain a supper or a night’s lodging. A peddler’s outfit lay beside him. Not a sale had he made that day. His curiously diminutive body was neatly clad, but his heart was heavy. He was dreadfully hungry, as only a boy can be.
“Oh, see the funny little man!” exclaimed a quartet of little girls, as they trooped past the shrinking figure. “Mamma! Come and buy something from him!”
Down the steps of a brown stone mansion came a young matron, curiosity shining out of her handsome eyes. The boy looked up and smiled. The lady did not buy anything, but her mother’s heart was touched, and before she hurried home with her little girls, she gave him five cents.
Last winter, two members of the Lamb’s Club were about to part on the club steps. One was “The Prince of Entertainers and the Entertainer of Princes,” Marshall P. Wilder. The other was a distinguished lawyer.
“Come and dine with me to-night, Mr. Wilder,” said the latter. “You have never accepted my hospitality, but you have no engagements for to-night, so come along.”
Ten minutes later, the great entertainer was presented to the wife of his host and to four beautiful young women.
A curious thrill passed over the guest as he looked into those charming faces. They seemed familiar. A flash of memory carried him back to that scene in the park. He turned to the hostess:—
“Do you remember,”—his voice trembled,—“a little chap in the park years ago, to whom you were kind,—‘a funny little man,’ the children called him, and you gave him five cents?”
“Yes, yes, I do remember that,—and you—?”
“I am the funny little man.”
It was indeed true. The hungry boy had not forgotten it, though wealth and fame had come to him in the meanwhile. In a little private diary that no one sees but himself, he has five new birth dates marked, those of the mother and her four daughters. “Just to remember those who have been kind to me,” is the only explanation on the cover of the book.
What a brightly interesting story is Wilder’s, anyway! Who else in all this great, broad land has made such a record,—from a peddler’s pack to a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars,—and all because he is merry and bright and gay in spite of his physical drawbacks. His nurse dropped him when he was an infant, but for years the injury did not manifest itself. At three he was a bright baby, the pride of the dear old father, Doctor Wilder, who still survives to enjoy his son’s popularity in the world of amusement-makers. It was no fault of the doctor that Marshall was obliged to go hungry in New York. Doctor Wilder lived and practiced in Hartford, where his son ought to have stayed, but he didn’t. At five he was handsome and well formed, but at twelve he stopped growing. The boys began to tease him about his diminutive stature.
“I don’t think I’ve grown very much since,—except in experience,” he said the other day in the course of a morning chat in his handsome bachelor apartments. “I thought, by leaving home, I might at least grow up with the country.”
“But you didn’t grow, after all?”
“No, I haven’t found the country yet that can make me grow up with it. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with being a plain expansionist.” [Mr. Wilder is nearly as broad as he is long.]
“How did you happen to choose the amusement profession?” I asked.