wished to buy away her Friedli from her, she would not let them come
near him; and only at rare times, and by way of special favour, allowed
a few acquaintances, whom she could depend on, to visit him in her
presence. She used, for the most part, to sit beside him herself, with
her knitting implements, spurring him on to work. When he had to copy
any of his drawings, he usually sketched the outline of them against the
glass of the window; and if, on these occasions, it chanced that some
boy, cat, dog, or other street passenger he might think worth looking
at, withdrew his eye for a moment from the work, his taskmistress failed
not to squall forth--"Gaping out again! Not a bit of work done all day!
Sit down with thee! Mind thy paper, and give over spying!" How meanly
he was kept in regard to clothing--how he had to sleep, for his life
long, in a child's bed, far too short for him, for want of a straw
mattress--and how, under such continual toil and miserable constraint,
he at last sank, and died of water in the chest, it is now needless to
say or to lament. We turn, rather, to the more pleasing contemplation of
what Mind, in this most unfavourable situation, nevertheless succeeded
in performing, and rendering himself as an artist.

Mind's special talent for representing cats was discovered and awakened
by chance.[4] It was not till after Freudenberger's death that Mind
fully developed his peculiar talent for the objects to which,
subsequently, through his whole life, he applied himself with such
special affection, and which, accordingly, he succeeded in representing
with such fidelity and truth. The condition of peasant children, their
sorrows and joys, their sports and bickerings--the coarse insolence of
the richer, the timid dispiritment of the needy, all stood in lively
remembrance before his fancy, which liked to go back into that first and
only period of his freedom, though, perhaps, also of his beggarhood.
In Freudenberger's school he had learned a natural, easy, and