l portraits in THE GALAXY magazine
without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. I have
seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time--acres of them here
and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe--but never any that moved
me as these portraits do.

There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number, now
COULD anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's, in the
October number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger
and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture in the September
number; I would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything
this world can give. But look back still further and recall my own
likeness as printed in the August number; if I had been in my grave a
thousand years when that appeared, I would have got up and visited the
artist.

I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that I
can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning. I know
them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know every line
and mark about them. Sometimes when company are present I shuffle the
portraits all up together, and then pick them out one by one and call
their names, without referring to the printing on the bottom. I seldom
make a mistake--never, when I am calm.

I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till my aunt
gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor. But first one
thing and then another interferes, and so the thing is delayed. Once she
said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in
the attic. The old simpleton! it is as dark as a tomb up there. But she
does not know anything about art, and so she has no reverence for it.
When I showed her my "Map of the Fortifications of Paris," she said it
was rubbish.

Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last to have
a perfect infatuation for art. I have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm
continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn to use with more and
more facility the pencil, brush, and graver. I am studying under De
Mellville, the house and portrait painter. (His name was Smith when he
lived in the West.) He does any kind of artist work a body wants, having
a genius that is universal, like Michael Angelo. Resembles that great
artist, in fact. The back of his head is like this, and he wears his
hat-brim tilted down on his nose to expose it.

I have been studying under De