Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/65

 years to 8 1/2 years of age. Every oculist had a go at my eyes. I have still signs of the holes in my ears where I wore earrings, but all to no avail. During this time my sister read the Bible to me, and told me childish fairy tales. When, at last, I recovered my sight, I had a yearning to read all that my sister had told me, and I taught myself out of a big history of England."

He learned to write as well—practised caligraphy from a black-letter Chaucer. This will account for Mr. Sala's peculiar print-like handwriting. What a happy picture—the little fellow on his knees, with the great volume against the back of the chair, tracing out letter by letter on a piece of paper. His parents' house was the resort of many foreigners of distinction. At ten years of age he could not speak a word of English, and after passing a few years at a school in France, came back to a school here for the purpose of learning the English language. He found it more difficult than Greek. As a child he wrote short stories—a notable one was a story of travel. But his childish fingers seemed destined for the clay, for at school in Paris he gained the first prize for modelling a map of South America.

"Every hill and mountain top, every river and valley was modelled in clay," said Mr. Sala. "That's what I call practical geography—that's what I should like to see in our schools to-day. We want practical lessons. I was sent to a school where lectures were object-lessons. We found something to learn in the green fields and flowers, knowledge in every article of furniture in the house, from the piano to the fire-irons. Why, I read my Greek Testament in a laurel grove! And whenever I had a spare moment, so surely was I to be found drawing and modelling."

So his childhood's days were passed, and eventually at fourteen he was apprenticed to Carl Schiller—a miniature painter. He also became a pupil at Leigh's Art School in Maddox-street. At sixteen he became assistant screen-painter to Beverley, at the Princess's Theatre. Beverley was a warm-hearted man. Without taking a halfpenny premium he was virtually young Sala's instructor in architectural drawing and perspective.

"Then my eyes began to trouble me again," said Mr. Sala. "You see, when a figure had to be introduced into a scene I was called in to do it. I was almost colour-blind. I put black into everything. In-