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."