MEN I HAVE PAINTED
sensitive to every touch of nature, and would respond willingly to the call of both pleasure and pain—to enjoy the one and relieve the other—but he had too much faith to resent the will of God in misfortune.
The day I last saw him is recalled over the years with constantly increasing frequency as I approach the time when I too must say good-bye to the charm of earthly beauty. He came to stay at a cottage I had taken, on that delightful plateau above the Delaware Water Gap, at Swiftwater. The trees had changed their dull-green summer dress for a score of gay vestures, each one surpassing the other in richness, and under the soft radiance of an early autumn sun the mountain-sides seemed to be carpeted in fantastic designs. We drove down the valleys and up the hills through the maze of colour, our admiration increasing at every turn, until the enthusiasm of my father became so great that he rose from his seat and stood in the carriage, in order to enjoy more actively the entrancing panorama moving around us. I gazed at him with delight—it was a joy to know that neither length of years nor the deeps of sorrow had dulled one string of a mind attuned to beauty.
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