Rembrandt remained with Swanenburch for three years, and the master
proved his faithful friend. He gave him an introduction into the
aristocratic art world which otherwise might have barred its doors
against so profound a genius, as aristocracy has done time and again.

The best artists are not necessarily the best teachers. If a man has too
much skill along a certain line he will overpower and kill the
individuality in his pupil. There are teachers who smother a pupil with
their own personality, and thus it often happens that the strongest men
are not the most useful as instructors. The ideal teacher is not the one
who bends all minds to match his own; but the one who is able to bring
out and develop the good that is in the pupil--him we will crown with
laurel.

Swanenburch was pretty nearly the ideal teacher. His good nature, the
feminine quality of sympathy in his character, his freedom from all
petty, quibbling prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst
the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and
silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him. A wrong environment
in those early years might easily have shaped Rembrandt into a morose and
resentful dullard: the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would
have been turned to gall.

* * * * *

The little business on the city wall had prospered, and Harmen van Ryn
moved, with his family, out of the old mill into a goodly residence
across the street. He was carrying his head higher, and the fact that his
son Rembrandt was being invited to the homes of the professors at the
University was incidentally thrown off, until the patrons at the