awaiting him.

The earliest artists of America had to go away to do their work,
because there was no place here for any men but those engaged in
clearing land, planting corn, and fighting Indians. Sir Benjamin West
was President of the Royal Academy while America was still revelling
in chromos. The artists who remained chose such objects as Davy
Crockett in the trackless forest, or made pictures of the Continental
Congress.

After the chromo in America came the picture known as the "buckeye,"
painted by relays of artists. Great canvases were stretched and
blocked off into lengths. The scene was drawn in by one man, who was
followed by "artists," each in turn painting sky, water, foliage,
figures, according to his specialty. Thus whole yards of canvas could
be painted in a day, with more artists to the square inch than are now
employed to paint advertisements on a barn.

The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 came as a glorious flashlight. For
the first time real art was seen by a large part of our nation. Every
farmer took home with him a new idea of the possibilities of drawing
and colour. The change that instantly followed could have occurred in
no other country than the United States, because no other people would
have travelled from the four points of the compass to see such an
exhibition. Thus it was the American's _penchant_ for travel which
first opened to him the art world, for he was conscious even then of
the educational advantages to be found somewhere, although there
seemed to be few of them in the United States.

After the Centennial arose a taste for the painting of "plaques," upon