still-living men whom the centuries could not turn to dust, because he
could tell the stories of their living and laboring to triumph, stories
of what they felt and suffered and were, the boy became as familiar with
the old masters--Italian, German, French, Dutch, English, Spanish--as he
was with most of the countries they had lived in. They were not merely
old masters to him, but men who were great, men who seemed to him to
have wielded beautiful swords and held high, splendid lights. His father
could not go often with him, but he always took him for the first time
to the galleries, museums, libraries, and historical places which were
richest in treasures of art, beauty, or story. Then, having seen them
once through his eyes, Marco went again and again alone, and so grew
intimate with the wonders of the world. He knew that he was gratifying
a wish of his father's when he tried to train himself to observe
all things and forget nothing. These palaces of marvels were his
school-rooms, and his strange but rich education was the most
interesting part of his life. In time, he knew exactly the places where
the great Rembrandts, Vandykes, Rubens, Raphaels, Tintorettos, or Frans
Hals hung; he knew whether this masterpiece or that was in Vienna, in
Paris, in Venice, or Munich, or Rome. He knew stories of splendid crown
jewels, of old armor, of ancient crafts, and of Roman relics dug up from
beneath the foundations of old German cities. Any boy wandering to amuse
himself through museums and palaces on "free days" could see what he
saw, but boys living fuller and less lonely lives would have been less
likely to concentrate their entire minds on what they looked at, and
also less likely to store away facts with the determination to be able
to recall at any moment the mental shelf on which they were laid. Having
no playmates and nothing to play with, he began when he was a very
little fellow to make a sort of game out of his rambles through
picture-galleries, and the places which, whether they called themselves
museums or not, were storehouses or relics of antiquity. There were