d
aspire to. A good woman such as Miss Blue obviously was, must be a
treasure anywhere in the world. He kept thinking he would write to
her--he had no other girl acquaintance now; and just before he entered
art school he did this, penning a little note saying that he remembered
so pleasantly their ride; and when was she coming? Her answer, after a
week, was that she expected to be in the city about the middle or the
end of October and that she would be glad to have him call. She gave him
the number of an aunt who lived out on the North Side in Ohio Street,
and said she would notify him further. She was hard at work teaching
school now, and didn't even have time to think of the lovely summer she
had had.

"Poor little girl," he thought. She deserved a better fate. "When she
comes I'll surely look her up," he thought, and there was a lot that
went with the idea. Such wonderful hair!

CHAPTER IX

The succeeding days in the art school after his first admission revealed
many new things to Eugene. He understood now, or thought he did, why
artists were different from the rank and file of mankind. This Art
Institute atmosphere was something so refreshing after his days rambling
among poor neighborhoods collecting, that he could hardly believe that
he, Eugene Witla, belonged there. These were exceptional young people;
some of them, anyhow. If they weren't cut out to be good artists they
still had imagination--the dream of the artist. They came, as Eugene
gradually learned, from all parts of the West and South, from Chicago
and St. Louis--from Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa--from Texas and California
and Minnesota. One boy was in from Saskatchewan of the Canadian north
west, another from the then territory of New Mexico. Because his name
was Gill they called him the Gila monster--the difference in the
pronunciation of the "G's" not troubling them at all. A boy who came
down from Minnesota was a farmer's son, and talked about going back to
plow and sow and reap during the next spring and summer. Another boy was
the son of a Kansas City millionaire.

The mechanics of drawing interested Eugene from the first. He learned
the first night that there was some defect in his understanding of light
and shade as it related to the human form. He could not get any
roundness or texture in his drawings.

"The darkest shadow is always closest to the high light," observed his
instructor laconically on Wednesday evening, looking over his