Show oI oIl I l I A c O lj f rs ii ir Y C J t 1 d I 4 I r 1 l 7 V r i JJ J OW destiny came to send such a delicate blos blossom blossom blossom som to the home of the Clows Claws in all defiance H How of heredity of one of the many man mysteries of life which will probably never be solved As Asa a mere baby his beauty was exceptional his curving lips his finely chiseled nose his wide clear blue eyes his good broad brow his sunny sunn hair all marked him in such sharp contrast to the and parents pare ts that even eyen they themselves stood a bit in awe of him and md his mothers pride in his beauty was yas marred by a certain uneasiness that never entirely ly left her Yes she admitted with a regretful sigh he is lurt but bul Im afraid hes most too for a boy Kind o 0 weakly too Jim Clow Claw would add with growing dissatisfaction With him a boy was to lo be regarded as a distinct asset valued exactly in proportion to his evidences of brawn and he longed for sturdy sens for exactly the same reason that he cherished the th colts that scampered about in the brook meadow In this he ho heas was as to be disappointed for to the Clow farmhouse perched down from the rocky roadside there came no nomore nomore more marc sons ons or daughters and the thc one boy bo Henry grew gr w up in in loneliness to develop within him that strange and dreaming fancy which made him of no n apparent worth Hes lazy laz that young un tin Jim decided in pro profound profound I found disgust while yet the child wore pinafores and from that time on the father f took up the burden of his cross with such patience as he might There was as no denying that the boy was not at all like other children of o the countryside He jes sets there and lookin in a I hole and never neer says a word his mother complained It jes pears like he lie aint got any to him at atall atall all III And she was right Many many times the little one sat at behind the thc kitchen looking looking and form forming forming forming ing no words to mold his thought What it was that he lie saw across the thc tiny valley valle not even he himself could have told but he lie noted with rapt eagerness the passing of every fleecy cloud across the sky i he lie traced trac j fanciful creatures in all its new formations and his eye dwelt in keen leen pleasure upon the deep gradations o of shade and color in them He found calm delight in increasing increasing increasing creasing with his years jears in the changing hue huc of oC the sky i itself For him the great dome of heaven was as not n l only blue but it was a hundred the blue of or Winter Vinter and the blue of Summer the blue of morning I and md the blue of evening the blue of midday and the blue of night with all the varying shades between I He Hc found at the edge of the brook one day dl a flower 1 so ro exactly matching that days sky that until its season I was passed and it t had ceased to bloom he lie came to lo it ite every e i day cb to lo compare it building with infinite pains p sins ins a little enclosure about it that the cattle might not trample it and md an odd fancy came to him that some little fleck of that great wonderful arch above had dropped droppel straight straight down to grow and bloom for him himI I To Jim Clow the farm was a barren and unlovely u I place if 11 in 10 his Ius mental grasp there were such things as asI I loveliness and nd The road was high here I and amI the house was built upon the rocky rod hillside that 1 sloped down from the highway so that it should sho ld take up none of the more fertile room in the hollow below ow i while beyond the barren hills rose rose ros up Ur again Of the I whole farm scarcely more than was pro productive productive productive and an because it was not all rich loamy bot bottomland bottomland bottomland such as he could never hope to possess the theman theman theman man despised it as his wife despi ed her ber house hous At first the dwelling long before Jim succeeded to it had been but bul a cabin down to which led a flight of roughly placed stone steps As the earlier generations of Clows Cloves had Iad needed more rooms they had added them one at ata ata t a time lime and upon that shelving ground each addition had been built buill at al a slightly different level so that in passing from any anyone one part of the house to another part there were steps to go up or steps to go down making this womans day da one of unending toil and while her child was still st JJ young oung she became old from hard and am unceasing labor To the boy however the farm was a paradise paradie and Ind the thc brook that was of value to the father only as ns it irrigated his fields and watered his cattle was to the boy lioy a perpetual delight He knew and loved every everyone everyone everyone one of its quiet little pools its hs steep noisy nois shallows its swift constricted channels its sandy bottoms where the water widened out in thin sparkling sheets its every crook and bend clear down to the creek into in o which at It the thc boundary of the farm it emptied At this point there formed a deep slow basin has in where leaves long and pointed dripped touching their very tips in the water and sometimes while he was watch watching watching watching ing a stealthy snake would rould slip its thin black length down from the overhanging branches and lOd glide away under the dark surface If one lay here and gazed long into the depth there were strange new colors shifting and varying with the changing light deep deep blues and mid browns and nd even reds down where the dim fishes moved He had a strange fancy about the brook too It D was an old old friend but as it was always racing away to the rivers and the th ocean he felt elt that it was always a l stranger as well as a friend Every time that he saw sate it he felt that he must make its acquaint acquaintance ance all over ocr again for this was water that he had never neer seen so 50 while hs he h was yet quite little he used sed tc to say Good morning to it every day da and anI lying hint down upon the bank with his face above it in his favorite spot he would tell teU it all shout bout himself and an about the clouds and the blue sky which It must have teen seen So the thc boy grew until he was thirteen and his list listless listless less dreaming increased Of course he worked as every creature upon that farm whether or must work but hut he labored with a l curious inefficiency that made Jim Claw Clow heart heartsick sick He was wasa wa a J good father in a n way and a patient one but some sometimes sometimes sometimes times in striving to bring the boy into a proper poper rela relation relation I tion lIon with his duty toward life he became brutal Iti It r i JY was all wasted Trouble slipped from the thc boys back backas as lS soon as it came A thrashing made him remember to be he steadfastly industrious for a time but at the turn of a furrow some harmony harmon of in earth and tree and hill bill and sky would impress him and he would pause and marvel at It this wonder of light and md color while his plow choked within the soil oil and the idle horses calmly thrashed their tails Color Always and md everywhere there was color even in shadow and Ind blackest night and he grew to revel eYel in it seeing it keenly where others blindly saw but mist or sterile ster le ground or grazing land but fruitful ful trees or barren but promises of fair Cair weather or foul Thus Henry BenT Clow Clo might have lived and died and have become clay again but in that blessed Summer came a I stranger one who traveling idly through the country saw this quaint little gray gra house with its roof and md its queer angles and its multiplicity of stone steps steN and saw also Iso a I Z 1 I t a t tl 1 f I J I 1 r i 9 1 I 4 y s 11 1 I i 1 It y i 1 l 14 t h i TREY THEY WERE NEARING SIXTY NOW HAD JUST SEEN THEIR hundred pictures in the valley below and the hills be beyond beyond yond ond and the winding check Mrs Clow took him in eagerly It meant mC more mart work but it meant ment cash c sh and cash was the one article that her husbands farm Carm would not produce Whatever fate te it was that sent this new note into the life jfe of the boy that fate had selected kindly for the stranger brought with him canvas and palette and brush and paint and because he bought the services of young oung Henry to carry crr these things a new heaven opened to the dreamer The stranger was surprised to find that the boy in setting up his easel and stool for him would himself judge the view and shift these paraphernalia exactly to lo the point that the man would have chosen Shy comment too the youngster offered for instance instance ce that a distant clump of trees which in evening mist was purpled empurpled em was ws sometimes in the th morning a tender blue like that as ashe he picked it out upon the palette that the trunks of the trees which at that particular hour ranged from and md brown to silo silv in in n certain lights and against certain certain certain tain colors appeared distinctly red of lone tone One whole month of this ecstasy was permitted the th boy 00 a 3 month in which before his worshipping e eyes cs was wrought the tIle magic of or completed canvas camas and then the magician went event away Before he left he proffered a check in payment of his bill but Jim Clow would have h e none of it He had never handled a check in all his life and it did not appeal to him What he wanted to see sec was greenbacks and silver The artist st laughed Very well said he Ill go to town and get gel it for you ou and in his buckboard the thc little litte pony that had brought him there took him to the world again lie He did not come back because he could not get his leis check cashed in the village so he waited until he got gol gotto gotto to the city and from there sent Jim a money order with a careful explanation of how to get it cashed Unfortunately that letter went astray and in the heart of Jim Clow there grew up a 1 natural resentment against the whole tribe of artists When Henry find finding finding finding ing a discarded brush and squeezing out a scant supply of colors from the empty tubes the artist had left him tried his halting hailing hand at painting upon one of the smooth slaty stones with which the farm abounded I Jim Clows patience J turned to violent anger ln er and he fought this new development of the boys worthless ness with bitterness nor was it altered much when after a long time the money order came back to the theartist theartist artist and he contrite made a special trip from the city to Jim Clows place to pay the money mane The artist was big enough and broad enough to ac accept accept accept in meekness this injustice for he was one of pity pitying pitying ing illg heah who knew kne that not all Gods children may have hae the larger gift of understanding but before he went away he saw the flat fiat stone with the crude daub upon it It was a picture of the house as seen from the high bank on the opposite side of the road and its drawing was rough and md out of proportion though it had some sonic perspective The colors too were raw but butone butone butone one thing struck him most forcibly The house itself was a I it had been painted a delicate blue that blue I The artist looked at the boy curiously That is a queer color you u gave gc the house he said sad The boy bo flushed i r what whal father says and md he made fun run of oC it ithe ithe ithe he replied but bat the way wa I have seen it along sometimes in the thc early mornings that is a l good deal dell like that only I have any an of the real color that it ought aught to be Again the thc artist arlist looked musingly from the boy 00 to the sketch and to the house Instantly he could see sec such an early morning mornin one of those misty gray dawns in which when the sun has just begun to struggle through there comes for a few moments that strange fleeting blueness of tint to pervade all distance and to swathe all objects He talked but little further with the boy mere conventional words of encouragement rind drove away in deep thought though once he turned around to look again gain at the youngster where he lie stood in the middle of the road gazing ruefully at his unfinished sketch Henry thought that the artist was displeased in some way wa and so he threw down the th stone and broke it then crept off behind the underbrush at It the upper side si e of the road to bury bur himself for half halfa a l day da in misery But nut after the lapse of a week there came a wonder wonderful ful fu express package to lo the lie village lage for Henry Clow Claw In it were half hat f a 1 dozen stretched canvases a block of sketching canvas a I palette a a I dazzling daz dazzling dazzling supply of paints and brushes The materials were all cheap but ut they were ample and for the first time in his life the boy sturdily opposed and defied his hi father In the face of scorn and ridicule of fierce im imprecation imprecation and even cen of whippings he persisted pC until at last Jim Clow was forced to confess that the boy worked much better and md more steadily about the farm since by this alone could he hope to ward off the th objection to his painting times limes What painstaking in study the youngster spent upon the lie coloring in meadow and woods and sky that thal once so plain seemed now no so 1 elusive only those who have gone over Oer the toilsome road may know as only they too loo may ma understand how he hoarded paint and md canvas ClOas as a miser does docs his gold making each stroke count and putting it down only on I after grave grae and earnest thought until at last he h began to force those evasive chromatic harmonics harmonies to come forth at his bidding It was wa three years after his first visit when the artist ar artist artist came again and in an automobile now for in those three years he too had worked and success had COPYRIGHT INS IMS crowned his efforts His famous picture The Valley Farm had been the start of it and now in a sort of f impersonal gratitude to lo the first rung of his ladder he journeyed out to see sec it He Hc had almost forgotten the thi boy except as one of the minor incidents nc dents that went to tomake tomake tomake make up the entire episode but the boy 00 had hd not for forgotten forgotten gotten him He lie had mentally elevated the artist to toan toan toan an almost Olympian glory glor and m it was with ith the trem trembling trembling trembling bling timidity in which one might await the smile or orthe orthe orthe the frown of a deity that he brought forth his can canvases canses vases v ses to show One by one the artist picked them up and set them down without comment but with growing interest until by and by he came across one that startled him Sunset it was called c lIed but such a sunset Here was as no flaming sky of reds and yellows but an In insen insensible insensible insensible sible gradation from Crom the of the zenith to a adeep adeep deep mauve auve in the interstices of the trees at the horizon and that mauve tint was everywhere It was almost a monochrome Trees and shadowy shadows atmosphere and foreground and distant silhouette all earth ea th and heaven displayed this keynote in varying depths and tint There was crudeness in the drawing the limbs of the th trees were wren stiff and clumsy and at unnatural angles and the leaves were badly grouped but the color coler 1 I It t was startling in its boldness and yet et as lS one looked and looked and looked again it resolved itself into a alive alive alive live landscape with a I vibrant harmony caught in one on of those rare misty evenings when Nature herself had wrought in in monochrome Who has been teaching you he asked the youth sharply No one replied the other in humbleness I 1 wish they the had No one repeated the artist to himself But b 0 tome some One did Jim Clow stood in frowning disapproval at |