pathy in his character, his freedom from all
petty, quibbling prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst
the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and
silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him. A wrong environment
in those early years might easily have shaped Rembrandt into a morose and
resentful dullard: the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would
have been turned to gall.

* * * * *

The little business on the city wall had prospered, and Harmen van Ryn
moved, with his family, out of the old mill into a goodly residence
across the street. He was carrying his head higher, and the fact that his
son Rembrandt was being invited to the homes of the professors at the
University was incidentally thrown off, until the patrons at the
beer-garden grew aweary and rapped their glasses on the table as a signal
for silence.

Swanenburch had given a public exhibition of the work of his pupils, at
which young Rembrandt had been pushed forward as an example of what right
methods in pedagogics could do.

"Well, why can not all your scholars draw like that, then?" asked a
broad-beamed Dutchman.

"They certainly could, if they would follow the principles I lay down,"
answered the master severely.

But admiration did not spoil Rembrandt. His temperature was too low for
ebullition--he took it all quite as a matter of course. His work was done
with such ease that he was not aware it was extraordinary in quality; and
when Swanenburch sold several of his sketches at goodly prices and put
the silver in the lad's hand, he asked who the blockheads were who had
invested.

Swanenburch taught his pupils the miracle of spreading a thin coat of wax
on a brass plate, and drawing a picture in the wax with a sharp graver;
then acid was poured over it and the acid ate into the brass so as to
make a plate from which you could print. Etching was a delight to
Rembrandt. Expert illustrators of books were in demand at Leyden, for it
was then the bookmaking center of Northern Europe. The Elzevirs were
pushing the Plantins of Antwerp hard for first place.

So skilfully did Rembrandt sketch, that one of the great printers made a
proposition to his father to take the boy until he was twenty-one, and
pay the father a thousand florins a year for the lad's services as an
illustrator. The father accepted the proposition; and the next day
brought around another Harmenszoon