very
good casts of the Clytie and the Discus-thrower filled their place. My
father greatly admired Power's Greek Slave, whose praises had been
celebrated in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_; but my mother regarded it as
almost "improper."

Nearly every youth of my generation, in Philadelphia, wanted not exactly
something better, but something more vivid. There were few sports; long
walks and a little cricket supplied the place of the coming baseball and
tennis.

In his "Steeplejack," James Huneker speaks of his weekly walks with Mr.
Edward Roth, the head of a military school and the author of "Christus
Judex." I, too, looked on these walks with an occasional row on the
Schuylkill with him as the best part of my education. But this was
later. All we could do, then, in our moments of leisure, was to walk and
talk and read.

The cult of the out-of-doors had not yet begun to be developed. The
beginning of "A Painter's Camp" was most attractive to my thirsty soul.
Mr. Hamerton says:

I had a wild walk yesterday. I have a notion of encamping on the
Boulsworth moors to study heather; and heartily tired of being
caged up here in my library, with nothing to see but wet
garden-walks and dripping yew trees, and a sundial whereon no
shadow had fallen the livelong day, I determined, in spite of the
rain to be off to the moors to choose a site for my encampment. Not
very far from this house still dwells an old servant of my uncle's
with whom I am on the friendliest terms. So I called upon this
neighbour on my way and asked him if he would take a walk with me
to the hills. Jamie stared a little and remarked that "it ur feefi
weet" but accompanied me nevertheless, and a very pleasant walk we
had of it.

Hamerton opened his book in Jane Eyre's country; our family had lately
read "Jane Eyre." This added interest to the volume, and there came the
details of the invention of the new hut, intended to be a shelter
against all weathers, so that the artist might study nature on intimate
terms. He made it in order to paint the heather at close range. Now,
this was a revelation! It had never hitherto occurred to me that the
heather changes its aspect day by day, or indeed that our pet place of
beauty, the Wissahickon Creek, or river if you like, was not the same
every day in the year except when the ice bound it! This may seem a
rather stupid state of mind; but it is the stupidity th