It is now a little less than a year since I followed the making of a water-colour sketch from its first rough pencil lines to its signature. The young man who made it, my friendship for whom, up to that moment, had never been clouded by any reverence whatever, assumed wholly new proportions in my sight. The air with which he produced his materials, his Whatman board, his brushes, his water-pot, his sponge and his worn palette, glorified by the deposits from masterly mixtures, his confidence as he began taking measurements of the Ocean (by which we sat) along his marvellously sharpened pencil, the ease with which he roughed in his outlines, the vigour of his attack upon the sky, his deft handling of rocks and breakers, these things gave me food for thought, "Is it, then," I reflected, "that this adolescent has been enjoying up to now a consideration at my hands totally inadequate to his real parts? Is it possible that one whom I have
38
