The Call of the Cumberlands

The splashes of lemon yellow that the boy daubed above the hills might

have been painted with a brush dipped in the sunset. The heavy clouds

with their gossamer edgings had truth of tone and color. Then the

experimenter came to the purple rim of mountain tops.

There was no color for that on the palette, and he turned to the paint-

box.

"Here," suggested Lescott, handing him a tube of Payne's Gray: "is

that what you're looking for?"

Samson read the label, and decisively shook his head.

"I'm a-goin' atter them hills," he declared. "There hain't no gray in

them thar mountings."

"Squeeze some out, anyway." The artist suited the action to the word,

and soon Samson was experimenting with a mixture.

"Why, that hain't no gray," he announced, with enthusiasm; "that

thar's sort of ashy purple." Still, he was not satisfied. His first

brush-stroke showed a trifle dead and heavy. It lacked the soft lucid

quality that the hills held, though it was close enough to truth to

have satisfied any eye save one of uncompromising sincerity. Samson,

even though he was hopelessly daubing, and knew it, was sincere, and

the painter at his elbow caught his breath, and looked on with the

absorption of a prophet, who, listening to childish prattle, yet

recognizes the gift of prophecy. The boy dabbled for a perplexed moment

among the pigments, then lightened up his color with a trace of

ultramarine. Unconsciously, the master heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

The boy "laid in" his far hills, and turned.

"Thet's the way hit looks ter me," he said, simply.

"That's the way it is," commended his critic.

For a while more, Samson worked at the nearer hills, then he rose.

"I'm done," he said. "I hain't a-goin' ter fool with them thar trees

an' things. I don't know nothing erbout thet. I can't paint leaves an'

twigs an' birdsnests. What I likes is mountings, an' skies, an' sech-

like things."

Lescott looked at the daub before him. A less-trained eye would have

seen only the daub, just as a poor judge of horse-flesh might see only

awkward joints and long legs in a weanling colt, though it be bred in

the purple.

"Samson," he said, earnestly, "that's all there is to art. It's the

power to feel the poetry of color. The rest can be taught. The genius

must work, of course--work, work, work, and still work, but the Gift is

the power of seeing true--and, by God, boy, you have it."