some portraits, and young Carpenter, getting permission to see him work, watched the operation of painting for the first time in his life, and with the keenness of a famished man's appetite. Some new ideas on the subject of color were thus acquired, and with the prompt executive impulse of a natural worker, the boy quickly set himself to try them. Colors and pencils he had not, and could not buy, and the suggestion of a neighbor that house paint would do nicely to begin with, was a welcome one. Away he went to the village and got one pound of white lead; back again home, and there he found some lampblack which was used to mark sheep. This served for light and shade; and for color, he discovered some lumps of Venetian red, which had dried up in a corner of the barn until so hard that he had to pound them up on the door-step. His pencils were of the sort used by carriage-painters, his pallet was whittled out of a piece of shingle, and his canvas a piece of coat lining. Thus armed, the youthful artist coaxed his mother to sit, and soon outlined and almost completed an easily recognized likeness, with what curious grays, reds, and browns it is not easy to imagine. But all parties to this great work were afraid of Mr. Carpenter, senior, who had grown really angry in opposing the "nonsense," as he termed it, of his son; and so it was kept a profound secret. Now Master Frank had become. rather unpleasantly conspicuous on the farm for being always invisible at work-hours; he was always out of the way—“'round the corner," like Mr. Chevy Slyme in the novel. One day the impatient father wanted Frank's help, and so, instead of calling him, went right

to his room. Striding angrily in, he saw the picture, and stopped short:

"Who is that ?" he asked.

"Don't you know, father?" said the boy, roguishly, and yet earnestly.

"It is your mother, I suppose," said the father, gruffly, though honestly; and he was somewhat conscience-struck at seeing that the boy who had not mind enough for groceries could actually make a likeness. He turned and hastily left the room without a word, but his manner toward his son at once became much more agrecable. Indeed, he even sat to him himself, selecting only rainy days, when he could not work, and feeling so slight an interest in the matter that he fell asleep on one occasion at least, within ten minutes after sitting down. Nevertheless, the likeness was unmistakable, though rough; and the neighbors said it was decidedly better than the works of the wandering artists who had been the only painters there before. A small compliment, yet doubtless true.

At length the sturdy opposition of the father to the single ambition of the son gave way, and it was agreed that young Carpenter might obtain some regular professional instruction. Promptly and joyfully the boy applied to Mr. Sandford Thayer, of Syracuse, who examined him closely, received him into his studio, and during five months gave him a course of judicious instruction which became a solid foundation for subsequent technical acquirements. Mr. Thayer had been a student under the eminent portrait-painter Elliott, who visited Syracuse and painted several portraits in Mr. Thayer's studio while young Carpenter was there.

Mr. Elliott, a genial and thoroughly kind-hearted man, took a great interest in the zealous young apprentice, allowed him full opportunity of observing his methods, gave him advice which was of much service to him, and has ever since been his steadfast friend.

Mr. Carpenter opened a studio for the first time, in his native village of Homer, in the year 1846, before he was sixteen. He boarded at home for a few weeks, but his father soon notified him that, having chosen his profession, he must live entirely by it; so he stoutly went into the village and electioneered for board from house to house, offering to paint portraits in pay for his meals. For the first year or two his "chariotwheels drave heavily" enough. His first commission was to paint the portrait of a clerk in the village store, who paid him with cloth enough for a pair of pantaloons; and his second brought him a pair of boots. But this success, though not very brilliant, was exceedingly substantial, and it was real practice, too; so the youth worked on with good courage. His first large cash fee was ten dollars. This sum was paid him by Hon. H. S. Randall, who lived in the vicinity, for drawings to illustrate his well-known book on sheep husbandry. Mr. Randall, recognizing the talent of the young artist, soon afterward employed him to paint his portrait. Shortly afterward, he painted the portraits of the nine survivors of the original Trustees of Cortland Academy; and the pictures, still adorning the Academy library, though crude and rough, possess all the chief characteristics of the artist's style. In 1848, Mr. Carpenter sent to the "American Art Union," then a flourishing institution in New York city, an ideal

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female head. This was submitted to the purchasing committee along with about four hundred other paintings, and was one of the twelve which they decided to buy, out of the whole number; and the struggling young countryman received what was to him the really handsome sum of fifty dollars. This was a genuine artistic and financial success, and was the beginning of Mr. Carpenter's career of efficient professional labor and prosperity, though he had poverty and difficulty yet to encounter. The Art Union afterward bought several others of Mr. Carpenter's pictures, being all that he offered them; and he now had a good many commissions for portraits, though at low rates.

In the spring of 1851 Mr. Carpenter established himself in New York city, sending to the Exhibition of the Academy of Design a portrait of a young girl, which was liked by many, and so much so by W. S. Mount, the painter, that he took pains to become acquainted with Mr. Carpenter, sat to him, and did all in his power to make him known. In the next autumn Mr. Carpenter married Miss Augusta H. Prentiss.

The following winter he executed a full-length portrait of Mr. David Leavitt, which, at the next Exhibition of the Academy, was very highly praised, and the artist was now chosen Associate of the Academy, at what was then an unusually early age. In the autumn of 1852, Hon. D. A. Bokee, of Brooklyn, commissioned Mr. Carpenter to paint a full-length of President Fillmore, which was a very successful picture, and received an extremely flattering testimonial in a letter from the President. The city of New York bought a duplicate of this picture. During the first winter of

Gen. Pierce's term, Mr. Carpenter was employed to paint his picture, the President consenting only with great reluctance, because several previous pictures had all been unsatisfactory. He, however, quickly found himself much interested in the work, and both he and his friends considered it beyond comparison the best portrait ever taken of him. At the urgent request of Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, Mr. Carpenter afterward executed successfully the difficult task of painting a picture of their deceased son, the materials being only a defective daguerreotype, and the recollections of surviving friends. The genial personal qualities of the artist, and his peculiar professional abilities, had by this time secured him efficient friends at Washington; and in the beginning of 1855 he went to Washington again, commissioned to paint Governor Marcy, and Senators Cass, Chase, Houston, and Seward. Congress adjourned before the work was completed, but President Pierce invited the artist to stay at the White House for the rest of his visit, and here he executed two portraits of Gov. Marcy, one of Attorney-General Cushing, and a profile head of the President.

Among the other portraits painted by Mr. Carpenter may be mentioned those of Henry Ward Beecher, his father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, Rev. R. S. Storrs, exMayors Talmadge, Brush, Lambert, and Hall of Brooklyn, General McDonald, Professors Gibbs and Aiken, General Fremont, Rev. Drs. Cox, Field, Bushnell, and Bacon, Captain Hudson of the first telegraph fleet, etc., etc.

Mr. Carpenter is now comfortably established in New York city, and is enjoying the reputation and income