Page:Letters of Life.djvu/66

54 of letters—pen and ink being forbidden, lest my garments should be defiled. As I grew older, the illustrations in my Hieroglyphic Bible were copied, and any graphic scene that I read, or heard narrated, produced one or more designs. As what I called my pictures multiplied, the desire to see them in colors became eager and engrossing. After various experiments, I succeeded in manufacturing certain substitutes and pigments wherewith to adorn the groups and regions of my fancy. A piece of gamboge was in my possession, which, with a fragment of indigo begged from the washerwoman, furnished different shades of yellow, blue, and green; while a solution of coffee-grounds sufficed for the trunks of my trees, and the ambered brown of their autumnal foliage. A wash of India-ink, dashed with indigo, answered for my skies and waters. Thus I got along wonderfully with my landscapes: but my chief delight was in peopling them; and how to obtain tints for any variety of costume, was the question. After many experiments, I found the expressed juice of the scokeberry quite a passable pink, which, with changes and dilutions, supplied me with color for lips and cheeks, and dresses for my gay women and children. Mingled with indigo, it produced a kind of purple, which I used for kingly robes. But it was hideous, and something better employed my poor, infantine chemistry night and day. I had executed what I considered a very fine scene from Roman history, and