OF PAINTING IN WATER-COLOURS 39 



known from the cradle should be master of such 

 mysteries ? " And lo ! he had ended, and the 

 vasty deep was mine to hang in the drawing- 

 room. I was compelled to own that the im- 

 possible had happened. The boy had painted a 

 picture, a picture, by Neptune ! which breathed 

 salt air like an onshore gale. 



After my first stunned feeling had passed away, 

 other reflections came to me. " Since," I thought, 

 " a friend of mine can learn in his spare time to 

 produce results so remarkable, it is clear that the 

 trick is easier of acquirement than I supposed. 

 After all, many young girls with no more brains 

 than their sisters do produce most tolerable 

 sketches, and it is not to be supposed that they 

 devote more than a small proportion of their 

 leisure to gaining their facility. Golf and lawn 

 tennis, croquet and district visiting, these and 

 other amusements claim them visibly for many 

 of their waking hours, yet they produce pictures 

 of which no one can mistake the meaning. Here, 

 one shall say with certainty, is the representation 

 of a lake with undoubted swans ; this can only 

 figure a distant mountain, and if these streaks and 

 gloom be not like a sunset behind a churchyard, 

 they are like nothing. Go to ! " I said. " Let us 

 emulate these damsels." 



I conceived a contempt for water-colour sketch- 



