aints.

When John was fourteen or fifteen, his portraits were thought so
lifelike that Boston people paid him good prices for them. He was glad
to earn money, for his kind stepfather died, leaving his wife to the
care of John and his stepbrother, Henry. He had been working and saving
for years when he married the daughter of a rich Boston merchant. This
wife, Suzanne, was a beautiful girl, proud of her husband's talent and
anxious for him to get on in the world. The artist soon bought a house
on Beacon Hill which had a fine view from its windows. He called this
estate, which covered eleven acres, his "little farm." You can guess how
large it looked when I tell you that the farm is to-day practically the
western side of Beacon Hill.

The young couple were happy and must have prospered, for a man who saw
the house on the hill wrote to his friends: "I called on John Singleton
Copley and found him living in a beautiful home on a fine open common;
dressed in red velvet, laced with gold, and having everything about him
in handsome style." It is evident John still liked bright colors.

John had never seen any really good paintings; he had never had any
teacher; and he longed to see the works of the old masters in other
countries. But at first he did not want to leave his old mother; then it
was the young wife who kept him here; and by and by he felt he could not
be away from his own dear little children, so it was not until he was
nearly forty that he went abroad.

In one of the first letters that Suzanne got from her husband he told of
the fine shops in Genoa. She laughed when she read that in a few hours
after he landed he bought a suit of black velvet lined with crimson
satin, lace ruffles for his neck and sleeves, and silk stockings. "I'd
know," she said to herself, "the suit would have a touch of
crimson--John does love rich colors!"

All his letters told how wonderful he found the old paintings and often
described his attempts to copy them. After he had visited the galleries
and museums of Italy, he went to England. He was delighted to find that
his wife and family had already fled there because of the Revolution in
America. He had heard of the trouble between the Colonists in America
and England and had worried night and day for fear harm would come to
Suzanne and the children. Of course he worried about the "little farm"
too, but it was no time to go back to Boston, and he could only hope his
agent would protect i