[Illustration: THE DARE-DEVILS.
_From "Social Pests."_]




_FRANK REYNOLDS._ II.

Frank Reynolds is yet another in the long list of artists who have
arrived at their true vocation by devious routes. There are certain
tendencies of mind which, when a man has them, refuse to be suppressed.
The journalistic instinct is one of them. Do what you will with the
man in whom it is planted, he can never keep his fingers from the
pen. Make him a doctor and you will find him scribbling columns
for the press on hygiene in the house and the benefits of breathing
through the nose. Send him into the army and he will fill his leisure
by writing tales of tiger-shoots and essays on the art of pig-sticking.
So with the artist. The man born with the gift to draw finds as
irresistible a fascination in pencil or brush as the man with the
power of narrative discovers in ink and paper. Whether he serves
before the mast as an A.B., or cattle-ranches out west, sooner or
later he is certain to drift into his proper sphere of activity.
It may take long to get there, but eventually he is bound to arrive.

In the case of Frank Reynolds the period of bondage was comparatively
brief. Entering at first upon a business career, he had originally
no prospect, nor intention, of developing his artistic impulses.
He had scarcely, indeed, a suspicion of his own powers--certainly
no proper knowledge of their latent possibilities. But commerce