e would play the violin and sing entire scenes from some
opera, his mother turning the leaves.

As to his skill as a musician, is this testimonial on the back of a fine
photograph I once had the pleasure of handling: "As a souvenir of tender
friendship, presented to Gustave Dore, who joins with his genius as a
painter the talents of a distinguished violinist and charming tenor.--G.
Rossini."

The illustrations for Dante's "Inferno" were done in Dore's twenty-second
year, and for this work he was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of
Honor. He never did better work, and at this time his hand and brain
seemed at their best.

Every great writer and every great artist makes vigorous use of his
childhood impressions. Childhood does not know it is storing up for the
days to come, but its memories sink deep into the soul, and when called
upon to express, the man reaches out and prints from the plates that are
bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth--or else they
tell of a time when he loved a woman.

The first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have been made
forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and untruth
creep easily into their accounting. All literature and all art are
secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the
color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. And so it happens that
all art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that
childhood does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it
is past and adolescence lies between. Then maturity gives back to the man
the childhood that is gone forever.

Many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the
impressions of childhood. Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and I'll name you
another--James Whitcomb Riley--have written immortal books with the
autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof.

Gustave Dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts,
feelings and experiences--all well colored with the stuff that dreams are
made of.

The background of every good Dore picture is a deep wood or mountain-pass
or dark ravine. The wild, romantic passes of the Vosges, and the sullen
crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his mind, just
as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and held his
breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches.

His tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bo