ON a Louisiana plantation, some years ago, a boy lived who wanted to paint pictures. In this home, with its wide-spreading acres, his ancestors had dwelt for many years-ever since they came from France-but, while offering everything in the way of comfort and pleasure that one could reasonably want, it lacked the one thing that this boy longed for above everything else—the opportunity of learning to draw and paint. If he could but go to Paris, he thought, where so many great artists worked and taught, instead of being sent to college! But the tradition of the family required that her sons should be college-bred, so there the lad went. But Throughout his student years, however, pencil and color-box were always at hand, and he sketched and painted in his leisure time. college life over, and after several years of camping, cattle-driving, hunting, and fishing in Texas, Percival Rosseau finally sailed for France, where he began his chosen career under famous masters, full of the joy of doing the work he loved so well, and growing steadily in skill and reputation as a painter of figures and landscapes. Several years ago, he chose Diana and her dogs as the subject for a picture. He painted the figure of the huntress with the utmost care, but the dogs were put on the canvas with such ease, that they seemed to paint themselves; for the artist had been an enthusiastic hunter all his life, and an artist At his home, not far from Paris, he keeps twenty or thirty dogs, and hunts with them during the fall and winter, making sketches and notes for pictures which he paints during the spring and summer. Imagine what a fortunate person this artist is, for, in order to do his work, he must first play, or, rather, his work for half the year is play! The dogs not only hunt in the season, but when at home they are brought into the studio and Copyright, 1912, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. taught to pose, though not in the exact positions they take in the field. A dog, if not running or walking, sits or lies down, but Mr. Rosseau's dogs have learned to stand on a table while he paints them. Usually at the end of twenty or thirty minutes, they are allowed to rest, but sometimes the artist becomes so absorbed that an hour slips away before he knows it; yet the model remains patiently posing until his master speaks. After three or four hours' work, however, the dogs tire, and sit down without permission, as a hint that they have done enough. One day, one of the most intelligent of them, who had been posing for his portrait for several mornings, was off duty and lying quietly in the studio, when a dog needed for another picture was brought in and placed on the table. The former model rose deliberately from the floor, looked the new-comer over disdainfully, and, jumping upon the table, placed himself in front of the intruder, quietly but firmly shouldering him into the background, as if to say, "Don't meddle with things you don't understand. If a model is needed, I'm "cloudy sky" that "proclaims it a hunting morning." Jack is English born, and when two or three years old was brought to France. One sad day he got in the way of a French racing automobile and was badly hurt. He was a poor suffering dog for many weeks, and his master had given up the hope that he would ever be well again, when the family physician was called in to attend one of the children of the household. As he was leaving, he saw Jack lying miserably on his cushion, and, with the quick sympathy of the good physician, bent over him and tried to find out his troubles. With as much care and thought as if Jack had been a human being, he then wrote a prescription for him. Jack took his medicine with exemplary patience and regularity, and shortly began to improve. In a few weeks he was about again, and before many months he was in the hunting field once more, as good as new. Diane, his companion in the picture, is a rather accomplished individual, with charmingly wellbred manners. Her deportment in the diningroom, when she is admitted to the honor of attending the family there, does credit to her bringing up. She has peculiar notions of her own, the oddest being that she must not take anything from the left hand, no matter how much she longs for it. If a titbit is offered to her in this way, she regards it sadly for a moment, then turns her head away, as if to put the temptation out of sight. Offer the morsel with the right hand, however, and she accepts it as eagerly as her sense of propriety will allow. Her master has owned her for six years, but she never forgets this trick, although sometimes a year is allowed to elapse between the trials. Another more useful trick is her ability to find lost articles. Her master need only say, quietly, in his ordinary voice, "Diane, I 've lost something," and she immediately turns back over the way they have come, sometimes going several miles, but always returning with the missing object. "COCKER SPANIELS IN THE BRUSH "-DICK AND JIM. the dog that 's wanted." This is only one of the many interesting anecdotes which the painter tells. Every picture and every dog has his own story. The picture "October" shows the setter, Jack, and the French spaniel, Diane, "standing" the game, a beautiful landscape behind them, and the "Cocker Spaniels in the Brush" shows two youngsters, Dick and Jim, about eighteen months old, in the full enjoyment of their first hunting season, their clumsy puppyhood not quite outgrown. They are the clowns among the birdhunting dogs, for their lively imaginations and enthusiastic dispositions lead them into all sorts of absurd antics. Instead of showing by their attitudes where a quail is hidden, they consider the matter for a moment, and then plunge into the thicket, forcing their way through tangled thorns and briers and incredibly small spaces. The bird, who thought herself secure behind her green ramparts, does n't wait the arrival of her unwelcome visitors, but leaves so promptly that, as Mr. Rosseau says, it is as if a feathered cannon-ball hurled itself through the air, for a quail travels with marvelous rapidity when in full flight. A bird, by slipping along from cover to cover, can often lead a running dog for miles and tire him out at last; but the sledge-hammer methods of a cocker spaniel put such bird tactics out of the question. But with it all, these dogs are the most expressive, amiable, and affectionate of the hunting-dogs. In "Pointing Pheasants," Diane, with her brown head and long silky ears, appears again, but with another companion, "Tom," called a "Lemon setter," from his yellow markings. Tom's experience has been rather an unusual one in dog history, for he began life under a cloud. He came of a fine hunting family, but seemed quite unworthy of his eminent ancestors, for, though he went into training at the proper age and great things were expected of him, he seemed to have been born without the instincts of his race-he was absolutely indifferent to hunting and simply bored by the efforts of his trainers in trying to educate him in the family profession. His first master had no use for a dog that could n't or would n't hunt, and one day said to a friend that a no-account dog like Tom was n't worth his keep. But he had what young story-writers call the fatal gift of beauty, only, in his case, it was not fatal, but quite the reverse, for his master's friend saw that he would be a wonderfully fine dog in a picture, where his defects as a huntingdog would not appear, and he would certainly be worth his keep to an artist he knew. So Tom left the parent kennel, and was shipped, properly tagged, to Mr. Rosseau, his new master. For a year, he lived a placid life with the other dogs, going out for an occasional walk, having his picture painted, and making himself companionable; hunting was never mentioned in his presence-he had been given up as a bad job. But one warm he can at least retrieve it," so, whistling to Tom, he started off. They had gone only a short distance, when Tom suddenly took the pose of the hunting-dog who scents game. His master looked at him disgustedly, and thought what a fool dog "POINTING PHEASANTS"-TOM AND DIANE. September day, the hunting season having begun, his master started out with the other dogs. The heat was so unusual that before the morning was over the dogs were completely fagged out, and the hunter saw a wasted afternoon in prospect, when his eye fell on Tom. "Not much use in taking him," he thought, "but if I get anything, he was. Just then, however, a good distance ahead, a bird whirred up from the ground. "That's queer!" thought the hunter; "quite a coincidence that a bird should happen to be in there." And he tramped along. But Tom began to range over the ground in the most approved style. In a few moments, he stood again, and another bird flew up: but this time the hunter was ready for it. Again and again this was repeated. Never before had that particular hunter shot over a dog who made him work so hard. Tom, the no-account dog, had come into his own, and from that day took his rightful place at the head of the kennel. "Tom," his master says, "is always just right. His judgment is perfect. He never makes a mistake; he never does the foolish things that other dogs do." When driven birds are shot from behind a cover, he crouches near his master, never showing himself except when he puts his head out to watch the shots and count the birds that fall. For Tom seems to have a kind of dogarithmetic that never fails him. He always remembers the exact number of birds he is to fetch, and goes back and forth unbidden until all have been brought in. On one occasion one of the beaters, in passing a dead bird, picked it up and carried it to Tom's master, so when Tom arrived at the spot, the bird was not there. Much perplexed, he circled around the place, then made a wider circle, and it was only when his master finally went |