anced
to light on the picture of a very peculiar-looking dog.
"Yes, it's a queer picture of a queer dog. The drawing is bad enough, and
never pleased me!" And Landseer picked up the picture and gave it a toss
out of the window. "You may have it if you care to go get it," he
carelessly remarked to the visitor. Smith made haste to run downstairs
and out of the house to secure his prize. He found it lodged in the
branches of a tree.
In telling the tale years afterward, Smith remarked that, whereas many
men had climbed trees to evade dogs, yet he alone of all men had once
climbed a tree to secure one.
Sir Walter Scott saw Landseer's picture of "The Cat's Paw," and was so
charmed with it that he hunted out the young artist, and soon after
invited him to Abbotsford.
Leslie, the American artist, was at that time at Scott's home painting
the novelist's portrait. This portrait, by the way, became the property
of the Ticknor family of Boston, and was exhibited a few years ago at the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Landseer, Leslie and Scott made a choice trio of congenial spirits. They
were all "outdoor men," strong, sturdy, good-natured, and fond of boyish
romp and frolic. Many were the long tramps they took across mountain,
heath and heather. They visited the Highland district together, fished in
Loch Lomond, paddled the entire length of Loch Katrine, and hunted deer
on the preserve of Lord Gwydr.
On one hunting excursion, Landseer was stationed on a runway, gun in
hand, with a gillie in attendance. The dogs started a fine buck, which
ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, Landseer shoved the
weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered
request, "Here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a
hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the vision could fade from memory.
In fact, both Landseer and Leslie proved poor sportsmen--they had no
heart for killing things.
A beautiful live deer was a deal more pleasing to Landseer than a dead
one; and he might truthfully have expressed the thought of his mind by
saying, "A bird in the bush is worth two on a woman's bonnet." And indeed
he did anticipate Thoreau by saying, "To shoot a bird is to lose it."
The idea of following deer with dogs and guns, simply for the sport of
killing them, was repugnant to the soul of this sensitive, tender-hearted
man.
In the faces of his deer he put a look of mingled grandeur and pain--a
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