is to Pyne,--one
too careful of style and running to excessive precision, the other too
negligent and running into indecision; and this judgment still holds.
Of Davidson, my immediate teacher, there was only to be got certain
ways of doing certain things, limited to the elements of landscape;
how to wash in the sky, to treat foliage in masses, and those tricks
of the brush in which the English water-color school abounds; but no
larger views, or more individual, of art itself. What he taught was,
perhaps, what I most needed to learn, but I was already too far on the
way to learn it easily.

I made a visit of ten days to Paris and saw with great profit the work
of the landscape painters and of Delacroix, the other figure painters
in general not interesting me much. I carried a letter of introduction
from the Wehnerts to Mademoiselle Didot, the daughter of Firmin Didot,
the famous publisher, then an old blind man, but one of the most
interesting Frenchmen I ever knew, as Mademoiselle Didot was the most
brilliant Frenchwoman. The old man was much interested in what I had
to say of America, and he paid us the national compliment of saying
that we spoke English more intelligibly than Englishmen in general. As
I spoke no French, our conversation was in English, and he understood
me perfectly, though he said he rarely could follow without difficulty
the conversation of an Englishman, while Americans in general he
understood readily. To accomplish all that I did with my fifty pounds
it may be easily understood that I had to cut my corners close, and
in fact they were so closely cut in my Continental excursion that I
landed at Newhaven on my return with one shilling in my pocket,
and when, at the end of my stay in England, I took the train for
Liverpool, I had only sixpence (my passage being provided for), and my
good friend Delf, who saw me off, on finding the state of my purse,
insisted at the railway station on my taking a sovereign for
contingencies.

This habit of making no provision for accidents had been a part of my
moral training, the faith in the overruling Providence never forsaking
me for an instant, so that, whatever I set about to do, I made no
provision for accidents. To go ahead and do what I thought I ought to
do, and let the consequences take care of themselves, has been the
habit of mind in which I have always worked and probably still work.
If the thing to be done was right, I never thought of what might com