did pay it out, and, as we have
seen, Harding earned no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in a
comparatively short time.

With such of this money as he had been able to save, he went to
Philadelphia and spent two months in study there; then he returned to
his old home, and astonished his neighbors by paying his debts. He
astonished them still more when they found he was making money by
painting portraits, for which he now charged forty dollars each, and his
aged grandfather felt obliged to protest.

"Chester," he said, having called him aside so that none could overhear,
"I want to speak to you about your present mode of life. I think it no
better than swindling to charge forty dollars for one of those effigies.
Now I want you to give up this way of living and settle down on a farm
and become a respectable man."

However excellent this advice may have been, Chester had gone too far to
heed it. He had decided to go to England, but he stayed in America long
enough to earn money to buy a farm for his parents and to settle his own
family at Northampton. This duty accomplished, he set sail for London,
and his success there was immediate, due as much to his remarkable
personality as to his work. He returned to America in 1826, and spent
the rest of his life here, painting most of the political leaders of the
country. It has been said of his portraits that his heads are as solid
as iron and his coats as uncompromising as tin, while his faces shine
like burnished platters.

Remarkable as Harding's story is, it is no more so than that of many of
his contemporaries. Francis Alexander, for instance, born in Connecticut
in 1800, a farm boy and afterwards a school teacher, never attempted
painting until he was over twenty. Then one day, having caught a
pickerel, its beauty reminded him of a box of water-colors a boy had
left him, and he attempted to paint the fish, with such success that he
was filled with amazement and delight. He practiced a while longer,
decorating the white-washed walls of a room with rude landscapes filled
with cattle, horses, sheep, hogs and chickens. All the neighbors came to
see his work and marvelled at it, though none of them cared to have his
house similarly decorated; but finally one of them offered Alexander
five dollars if he would paint a full-length portrait of a child.

Other orders followed, and finally with sixty dollars in his pocket, he
started for New York. Some years later, he sought