R.M. Ballantyne
"Digging for Gold"
Chapter One.
Adventures in California.
Begins with Differences of Opinion.
If ever there was a man in this world who was passionately fond of painting and cut out for a painter, that man was Frank Allfrey; but fate, in the form of an old uncle, had decided that Frank should not follow the bent of his inclinations.
We introduce our hero to the reader at the interesting age of eighteen, but, long before that period of life, he had shown the powerful leaning of his spirit. All his school-books were covered with heads of dogs, horses, and portraits of his companions. Most of his story-books were illustrated with coloured engravings, the colouring of which had been the work of his busy hand, and the walls of his nursery were decorated with cartoons, done in charcoal, which partial friends of the family sometimes declared were worthy of Raphael.
At the age of thirteen, his uncle—for the poor fellow was an orphan—asked him one day what he would like to be. This was an extraordinary condescension on the part of Mr Allfrey, senior, who was a grim, hard-featured man, with little or no soul to speak of, and with an enormously large ill-favoured body. The boy, although taken by surprise—for his uncle seldom addressed him on any subject,—answered promptly, “I’d like to be an artist, sir.”