g and adding to her
knowledge. She owed to Mother's teaching the first principles of
drawing, and I have often seen her refer for rules on perspective to
"My Childhood in Art,"[20] a story in which these rules were fully laid
down; but Mother had no eye for colour, and not much for figure
drawing. Her own best works were etchings on copper of trees and
landscapes, whereas Julie's artistic talent lay more in colours and
human forms. The only real lessons in sketching she ever had were a
few from Mr. Paul Naftel, years after she was married.

[Footnote 20: Included in "The Human Face Divine, and other Tales." By
Margaret Gatty. Bell and Sons.]

One of her favourite methods for practising drawing was to devote
herself to thoroughly studying the sketches of some one master, in
order to try and unravel the special principles on which he had
worked, and then to copy his drawings. She pursued this plan with some
of Chinnery's curious and effective water-colour sketches, which were
lent to her by friends, and she found it a very useful one. She made
copies from De Wint, Turner, and others, in the same way, and
certainly the labour she threw into her work enabled her to produce
almost facsimiles of the originals. She was greatly interested one day
by hearing a lady, who ranks as one of the best living English writers
of her sex, say that when she was young she had practised the art of
writing in just the same way that Julie pursued that of drawing,
namely, by devoting herself to reading the works of one writer at a
time, until her brain was so saturated with his style that she could
write exactly like him, and then passing on to an equally careful
study of some other author.

The life-like details of the "cholera season," in the second chapter
of "Six to Sixteen," were drawn from facts that Major Ewing told his
wife of a similar season which he had passed through in China, and
during which he had lost several friends; but the touching episode of
Margery's birthday present, and Mr. Abercrombie's efforts to console
her, were purely imaginary.

Several of the "Old-fashioned Fairy Tales" which Julie wrote during
this (1872) and previous years in _Aunt Judy's Magazine_, were on
Scotch topics, and she owed the striking accuracy of her local
colouring and dialect, as well as her keen intuition of Scotch
character, to visits that she paid to Major Ewing's relatives in the
North, and also to reading such typical books as _Mansie Wau