He worked
doggedly on under the blasphemous but efficient guidance of Mr. Penway.
He was becoming a man with a fixed idea--the idea of making good.
He began to make headway. His beginnings were small, but practical. He
no longer sat down when the spirit moved him to dash off vague
masterpieces which might turn into something quite unexpected on the
road to completion; he snatched at anything definite that presented
itself.
Sometimes it was a couple of illustrations to a short story in one of
the minor magazines, sometimes a picture to go with an eulogy of a
patent medicine. Whatever it was, he seized upon it and put into it all
the talent he possessed. And thanks to the indefatigable coaching of
Robert Dwight Penway, a certain merit was beginning to creep into his
work. His drawing was growing firmer. He no longer shirked
difficulties.
Mr. Penway was good enough to approve of his progress. Being free from
any morbid distaste for himself, he attributed that progress to its
proper source. As he said once in a moment of expansive candour, he
could, given a free hand and something to drink and smoke while doing
it, make an artist out of two sticks and a lump of coal.
"Why, I've made _you_ turn out things that are like something on
earth, my boy," he said proudly. "And that," he added, as he reached
out for the bottle of Bourbon which Kirk had provided for him, "is
going some.
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