What Birds Have Done 

 With Me 



CHAPTER I 



VIRGIN SOIL 



Alice Gary, in her order for a picture, started 

 out by asking a painter, "Has your hand the cun- 

 ning to draw shapes of things that you never 

 saw?" On the face of it, that request is scarcely 

 less appalling than the demand in olden times for 

 the interpretation of a forgotten dream. Later 

 on, we find that she hoped to make the artist see 

 the desired picture with her eyes, not his own. 

 Using words for pigments, she is very successful 

 in reproducing her memory picture, but what the 

 painter saw was unfortunately never put upon 

 canvas to constitute an object lesson of what a 

 blur and daub a picture must be where the artist 

 is attempting to paint something that he never 

 actually saw himself. 



The libraries and art galleries of the world are 

 9 



