ind in some of his idle rambles: he followed Legel every where, and
watched him while he worked. Legel, touched with compassion for the poor
boy, showed him what he was engaged with, or what he had already
finished; and, in the end, would take him along with him in his walks,
or amuse him in his own apartment with exhibitions of prints. In
particular, he allowed the boy, as often as he liked, to turn over
Ridinger's Animals, of which Herr Gruner had a collection; and some of
these Mind was not long in trying to imitate with the lead pencil,
preferring above all lions, which continued long his favourite animals.
These attempts Legel from time to time corrected, and, from less to
more, the youngster at length ventured to copy from nature, like his
master, and to draw some sheep, goats, and _cats_.

His father, the joiner, however, thought that to draw on paper was
nothing, and wood was the only material on which it was worth one's
pains to work. Accordingly, whenever the boy asked paper for drawing, he
threw him a bit of wood; so that Gottfried was fain to try also cutting
animals in wood, an art in which he speedily attained such dexterity,
that, by degrees, his wooden sheep and goats came to ornament all the
presses and mantel-pieces in the village. Occasionally, too, he tried
drawing likenesses of some peasant boys of Worblaufen, or carving them
in wood; and these attempts were not unsuccessful.

It is unknown on whose recommendation Mind, in his eighth year, was
placed at the academy for poor children, which Pestalozzi had previously
instituted at Neuenhof, near Bern, Aargau; but, in the year 1778, we
find, in the authentic account of that institution, published by the
Economic Society of Bern, the following short and somewhat clumsily
expressed notice:--"Friedly Mynth of Bossi (Mind of Pizy), of the
bailliwick of Aubonne, resident in Worblaufen, very weak, incapable of
hard work, full of talent for drawing, a strange creature, full of
artist-caprices, along with a certain roguishness: drawing is his whole
employment: a year and a half here: ten years old." Neither do we know
how long he remained at this academy; somewhere between the years 1780
and 1785, he came to the painter, Sigmund Hendenberger, at Bern, a man
who had formed himself mostly at Paris in the Boucher school, but
afterwards rather inclined to Greuze's style, and who, by his painting
of Swiss family pieces, had acquired a considerable sum of money, and