Vandover thought this last a wonderful work of art and made a hideous
copy of it with very soft pencils. He was so pleased with it that he
copied another one of the pictures and then another. By and by he had
copied almost all of them. His father gave him a dollar and Vandover
began to add to his usual evening petition the prayer that he might
become a great artist. Thus it was that his career was decided upon.

He was allowed to have a drawing teacher. This was an elderly German, an
immense old fellow, who wore a wig and breathed loudly through his nose.
His voice was like a trumpet and he walked with a great striding gait
like a colonel of cavalry. Besides drawing he taught ornamental writing
and engrossing. With a dozen curved and flowing strokes of an ordinary
writing pen he could draw upon a calling card a conventionalized
outline-picture of some kind of dove or bird of paradise, all curves and
curlicues, flying very gracefully and carrying in its beak a half-open
scroll upon which could be inscribed such sentiments as "From a Friend"
or "With Fond Regards," or even one's own name.

His system of drawing was of his own invention. Over the picture to be
copied he would paste a great sheet of paper, ruling off the same into
spaces of about an inch square. He would cut out one of these squares
and Vandover would copy the portion of the picture thus disclosed. When
he had copied the whole picture in this fashion the teacher would go
over it himself, retouching it here and there, labouring to obviate the
checker-board effect which the process invariably produced.

At other times Vandover copied into his sketch-book, with hard crayons,
those lithographed studies on buff paper which are published by the firm
in Berlin. He began with ladders, wheel-barrows and water barrels,