“But a correspondence school——” I protested.
“I know,” he said. “It seems ridiculous. It’s true, just the same. I didn’t know where else to go and besides I didn’t have the money. There was a school in Indianapolis but they wanted too much—I tried it awhile but the instructor knew very little. The correspondence school wanted only six dollars for fifteen lessons, and they took it in part payments.”
He smiled reminiscently.
“Well, how did you come to get started, finally?”
“Oh, I worked most of my method out for myself. Art is a matter of feeling, anyhow. The drawing in squares gave me an idea which made me abandon the squares. I used to write poetry too, of sorts—or tried to—and one day I wrote a poem and decided to illustrate it and take it down to one of the Indianapolis newspapers, because I had seen others in there somewhat like it—I mean illustrated in pen and ink. It was a poem about October, or something. My father thought I was wasting my time. He wanted me to tend the farm. But I took the poem down and they bought it right away—gave me six dollars for it.”
“And then what?” I asked, deeply interested.
“Well, that rather astonished my father—as much, if not more, than it did me. He never imagined there was any money in that sort of thing—and unless you were going to make money——” He waved his hand deprecatively.
“I know,” I agreed. “And then what?”
“Well, they bought another and my father began to think there was something in it—in art, you know, if you want to call it that, in Indiana, at that time!”—he paused. “Still I can’t tell you how much feeling I put in those things, either,—the trees, the birds flying, the shocked corn. I used to stop when I was plowing or reaping and stand and look at the sky and the trees and the clouds and wish I could paint them or do something. The big cities seemed so far off. But it’s Indiana that seems wonderful to me now.”
“And to me,” I said. “Like a mother. Because we were brought up there, I suppose.”