with a happy chance which suggested
a higher artistic (and monetary) value for that faculty for drawing
which previously he had regarded in the light of a mere hobby,
caused him to throw up his earlier plans and devote himself entirely
to black-and-white illustration.

[Illustration]

There had been preparation for this, however. The son of an artist,
Frank Reynolds inherited his native talent, and this was developed
in no small measure during boyhood under his father's guidance. It
was the chief delight of Reynolds junior to "mess about" (as he
himself succinctly puts it) with the palette and tools of Reynolds
senior, and the licence thus permitted enabled him to discover for
himself much of the rudiments of the craft of the draughtsman and
painter. More was learned from long and absorbed contemplation of
his father at work.

[Illustration: "CHACUN" WITH HIS "CHACUNE".
_From "Paris and some Parisians"_]

If early inclinations were of more lasting duration than is their
wont, it is likely that Frank Reynolds would now be known to fame
as a painter of martial types and gory battlefields. With him the
fascination which soldiers and all things military have for the
boyish mind took the form of an intense eagerness to reproduce
in colour and line the gay pageant of the march. The skirl of the
fife and the tattoo of the drum inspired him with a desire, not to
shoulder a gun, but to seize a pencil. There was a shop in Piccadilly
where water-colour sketches of military types might frequently be
seen displayed to view, and to Reynolds junior a tramp thither of
several miles from the far west of London was as nothing, could he
but have the ecstatic joy of gazing, with nose flattened against
the window-pane, upon these transcendent works of art, for an hour
or more on end.

[Illustration]

This early training, to be regarded as the sure foundation upon
which the artist's later education was to rest, owed not a little,
perhaps, of its effectiveness to its casual and desultory nature.
The natural bent was allowed to reveal itself: development was
gradual, and (as it were) automatic. Individuality was neither
crushed nor cramped. On the contrary, it was given full play, and
that the work of Frank Reynolds is invested with so definite a
quality of personality is due in no small degree to the special
circumstances of his youthful training.

Heatherley's, in Newman Street, London, was his only school. Here,
for some time af