The trunks of her trees she painted
with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo answered
tolerably well for sky and water. She afterwards discovered that the
pink juice of chokeberry did very well for lips, cheeks, and gay
dresses. Mixed with a little indigo it made a very bad purple, which the
young artist, for the want of a better, was obliged to use for her royal
robes. In sore distress for a better purple she squeezed the purple
flowers of the garden and the field for the desired tint, but nothing
answered the purpose, until, at dinner, one day, she found the very hue
for which she longed in the juice of a currant and whortleberry tart.
She hastened to try it, and it made a truly gorgeous purple, but the
sugar in it caused it to come off in flakes from her kings and emperors,
leaving them in a sorry plight. At length, to her boundless,
inexpressible, and lasting joy, all her difficulties were removed by her
father giving her a complete box of colors.
At school she was fortunate in her teachers. One of them was the late
Pelatiah Perit, who afterward won high distinction as a New York
merchant and universal philanthropist. Her first serious attempts at
practical composition were translations from Virgil, when she was
fourteen years of age. After leaving school she studied Latin with much
zeal under an aged tutor, and, later in life, she advanced far enough in
Hebrew to read the Old Testament, with the aid of grammar and
dictionary.
Pages:
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525