move, but the law of
gravitation there only acts to keep things quiet. The Dutch never run
footraces--neither do they scorch.

In Amsterdam I have seen a man sit still for an hour, and this with a
glass of beer before him, gazing off into space, not once winking, not
even thinking. You can not do that in America, where trolley-cars whiz
and blizzards blow--there is no precedent for it in things animate or
inanimate. In the United States everything is on the jump, art included.

Rembrandt Harmens worked in his father's mill, but never strained his
back. He was healthy, needlessly healthy, and was as smart as his
brothers and sisters, but no smarter, and no better looking. He was
exceedingly self-contained, and would sit and dream at his desk in the
grammar-school, looking out straight in front of him--just at nothing.

The master tried flogging, and the next day found a picture of himself on
the blackboard, his face portrayed as anything but lovely. Young
Rembrandt was sent home to fetch his father. The father came.

"Look at that!" said the irate teacher; "see what your son did; look at
that!"

Mynheer Harmen sat down and looked at the picture in his deliberate Dutch
way, and after about fifteen minutes said, "Well, it does look like you!"

Then he explained to the schoolmaster that the lad was sent to school
because he would not do much around the mill but draw pictures in the
dust, and it was hoped that the schoolmaster could teach him something.

The schoolmaster decided that it was a hopeless case, and the miller went
home to report to the boy's mother.

Now, whenever a Dutchman is confronted by a problem too big to solve, or
a task too unpleasant for him to undertake, he shows his good sense by
turning it over to his wife. "You are his mother, anyway," said Harmen
van Ryn, reproachfully.

The mother simply waived the taunt and asked, "Do you tell me the
schoolmaster says he will not do anything but draw pictures?"

"Not a tap will he do but make pictures--he can not multiply two by one."

"Well," said the mother, "if he will not do anything but draw pictures, I
think we'd better let him draw pictures."

* * * * *

At that early age I do not think Rembrandt was ambitious to be a painter.
Good healthy boys of fourteen are not hampered and harassed by
ambition--ambition, like love, camps hot upon our trail later. Ambition
is the concomitant of rivalry, and sex is its chief