Page:Letters of Life.djvu/67

Rh wanted something for the flowing mantles of the senators. Images of the Tyrian purple haunted me, and flashed before my dreams. I pressed the rich petals of the pansy, but they yielded nothing to my hope. At length, in one of our desserts, I observed in the over flowing syrup of a tart, composed of the ripe currant and whortleberry, the identical tint for which I had so earnestly sought. Requesting a few spoonfuls, after sundry filtrations I applied it to the drapery of a belle, and, had I known the meaning of Eureka, should have shouted it at the top of my voice. But as the saccharine properties of my new color eventually predominated, causing the dress to cleave away from the form it arrayed, I did not use it for the conscript fathers. A single brush, in these processes of limning, was all that I could call my own. When I desired some of larger capacity, I found that I could manufacture them from small quills and my own soft hair. This one nice little brush, with the pieces of India-ink and gamboge before mentioned, and a lead-pencil, were all the articles for which I was indebted to the shops, in this my early career toward the fine arts. Yet the rapture enjoyed in my solitary chamber, as these untaught efforts accumulated, was indescribable. Not even a particle of rubber was mine, that substance not being then common; so that I was careful to draw with extreme accuracy, effacing the few false outlines with crumbs of stale bread. Though the delight