and powder under the cars and burn them up."

"Then what?" I asked.

"Well, I've got it planned automatically so that you will see people
jumping out of the cars and tumbling down on the rocks, the flames
springing up and taking to the cars, and all that. Don't you believe
it?" he added, as I smiled at the idea. "Look here," and he produced a
model of one of the occupants of the cars. He labored for an hour to
show all the intricate details, until I was compelled to admit the
practicability and novelty of the idea. Then he explained that
instantaneous photography, as it was then called, was to be applied at
such close range that the picture would appear life size. The actuality
of the occurrence would do the rest.

Skepticism still lingered with me for a time, but when I saw the second
train growing, the figures and apparatus gradually being modeled, and
the correspondence and conferences going on between the artist and
several companies which wished to gain control of the result, I was
perfectly sure that his idea would some day be realized.

As I have said, when I first met S---- he had not realized any of his
dreams. It was just at that moment that the tide was about to turn. He
surprised me by the assurance, born of his wonderful virility, with
which he went about all things.

"I've got an order from the _Ladies' Home Journal_," he said to me one
day. "They came to me."

"Good," I said. "What is it?"

"Somebody's writing up the terminal facilities of New York."

He had before him an Academy board, on which was sketched, in wash, a
midnight express striking out across the Jersey meadows with sparks
blazing from the smoke stacks and dim lights burning in the sleepers. It
was a vivid thing, strong with all the strength of an engine, and rich
in the go and enthusiasm which adhere to such mechanisms.

"I want to make a good thing of this," he said. "It may do me some
good."

A little later he received his first order from Harper's. He could not
disguise that he was pleased, much as he tried to carry it off with an
air. It was just before the Spanish war broke out, and the sketches he
was to do related to the navy.

He labored at this order with the most tireless enthusiasm. Marine
construction was his delight anyhow, and he spent hours and days making
studies about the great vessels, getting not only the atmosphere but the
mechanical detail. When he made the pictures they represented all that
he felt.

"