 however, no reason to congratulate himself upon having compelled
the youthful genius of his son to forsake its natural bent. He fared like the
schoolboy, who attempts to stop with his finger the spout of a water cistern,
while the stream, exasperated at this compression, escapes by a thousand
uncalculated spirts, and wets him all over for his pains. Even so fared the
senior Tinto, when his hopeful apprentice not only exhausted all the chalk in
making sketches upon the shop-board, but even executed several caricatures of
his father's best customers, who began loudly to murmur, that it was too hard to
have their persons deformed by the vestments of the father, and to be at the
same time turned into ridicule by the pencil of the son. This led to discredit
and loss of practice, until the old tailor, yielding to destiny and to the
entreaties of his son, permitted him to attempt his fortune in a line for which
he was better qualified.
    There was about this time, in the village of Langdirdum, a peripatetic
brother of the brush, who exercised his vocation sub Jove frigido, the object of
admiration to all the boys of the village, but especially to Dick Tinto. The age
had not yet adopted, amongst other unworthy retrenchments, that illiberal
measure of economy, which, supplying by written characters the lack of
symbolical representation, closes one open and easily accessible avenue of
instruction and emolument against the students of the fine arts. It was not yet
permitted to write upon the plastered door-way of an alehouse, or the suspended
sign of an inn, »The Old Magpie,« or »The Saracen's Head,« substituting that
cold description for the lively effigies of the plumed chatterer, or the
turban'd frown of the terrific soldan. That early and more simple age considered
alike the necessities of all ranks, and depicted the symbols of good cheer so as
to be obvious to all capacities; well judging, that a man who could not read a
syllable, might nevertheless love a pot of good ale as well as his
better-educated neighbours, or even as the parson himself. Acting upon this
liberal principle, publicans as yet hung forth the painted emblems of their
calling, and sign-painters, if they seldom feasted, did not at least absolutely
starve.
    To a worthy of this decayed profession, as we have already intimated, Dick
Tinto became an assistant; and thus, as is not unusual among heaven-born
geniuses in this department of the fine arts, began to paint before he had any
notion of drawing.
    His talent
