A STRANGE STUDIO.
YOUNG ARTIST.
Albert, the blacksmith’s son, will be an artist some day. While other boys are playing ball or skating, or other amusements, Albert is using his time making pictures. He seems to delight in it, and even when quite a small boy, many were the scoldings he received from his parents for a too free use of his chalk and pencil, leaving his rude drawings on wall and fences; and in school his troubles were only increased, for his books always contained pictures, sometimes of horses, or dogs, or of his friends. This habit did not correspond with his teachers’ ideas of tidiness, and punishment followed punishment. It did not help matters, though, and his drawing continued. In time he became quite apt and could make pictures that very closely resembled the objects he drew. His companions called him the “artist,” and they would have him make pictures of them. Some of his methods were odd enough. To make an outline of a boy’s face he would tack a piece of paper on the side of a door in his father’s shop, and by placing the boy between the paper and a lighted lamp, would trace with pencil the outline of the shadow as it fell on the paper. Soon he tried painting with paint and brush. At first his efforts were crude, and to anyone less determined and enthusiastic, discouraging. Not so to Albert. He worked along day after day, and in time could paint well enough to attract some notice in his little village.
About this time a great artist from the city, spending the summer in this part of the country, heard of Albert, and by accident met him. Quick to perceive the natural talent of the boy, and being generously inclined, he offered to take him to his city home and give him training in his studio. The parents, though loth to be separated from their son, saw here an opportunity to educate him in his favorite study, and so accepted the offer.
You can well imagine Albert’s surprise and delight when he first entered the studio and saw the work of the master. How the great paintings filled him with wonder. He proved an apt student, a true artist, and year after year worked with patience and determination, and became a noted painter.
He often thinks of his early days—of the pictures he made in the old blacksmith shop. He thinks, too, of the years spent since then in attaining prominence in his calling, but no regrets come to him.
The true story of how one boy succeeded can be of use to others. It only takes this same perseverance and pluck to succeed in any other calling. Had he complained because he could not paint like the master, and not been contented to study on during these years, he could not now lay claim to his present success and eminence as an artist. Let others, in reading this, see in it an object, and may it bring to them new resolve to succeed in the life work they have started on.