That first Saturday he was uninterrupted in his work, and at nightfall again set out for the mountains. But the following week, to his surprise, a visitor called, a school-teacher from the East, and the result of the visit was first a commission to paint the stranger’s portrait for five dollars, and secondly, the beginning of a valued friendship. Next Saturday the teacher called again, accompanied by two ladies, who wished to learn to paint. The lessons were continued weekly at a dollar a visit, and thus for nearly a year he subsisted, one day of each seven in his studio and during the others among the mountains; until, encouraged by his friend, he made a sale of his drawings, netted sixty dollars, and therewith packed up his blanket and oil-stove and set his face toward Cincinnati. Here he entered the day and evening classes in drawing and rented a little room. Before long, however, he was heartsick for the old, free life. It was beyond his reach; yet, as he went to and from his work, he passed the United States mail stables, and the sight of the horses stirred the old feeling of comradeship. The lights were kept burning at night in the stables, so morning after morning before daybreak he lived among them, drawing and studying. By degrees he turned to modelling and executed the figure of a horse pawing a dead one. It was shown to Mr. Rebisso, the head of the school of modelling, who, discovering the young man’s ability, gave him encouragement and advice, permitting him to work in his own studio and finally making it possible for him to visit Paris. Until Borglum’s fingers had found their way to clay he had been groping in the half-light of unrealised purpose. Now, however, he discovered at one stride the kind of subject nearest to his heart and the method of expression best fitted to his experience and temperament. For, look you, his experience had been of facts; facts, it is true, from which in the aftermath of memory his temperament was to extract their romance and sentiment; but, in the first place, facts of the most direct and vigorous form. The subtleties, to which painting better lends itself, were outside the habit of his mind; whereas the tangible shape and more simple obviousness of sculpture exactly fitted his need. He had reached it through the same natural, unpremeditated growth that had characterised all his development. Such kind of growth is, perhaps, only possible to one whose boyhood and early manhood have been spent in the large vacancy of nature and the natural life. To those who are bred within the crowded and conscious civilisation of cities the desire of being an artist will probably come earlier; it will anticipate the experiences of life; from the first will shape itself more definitely and in its course conform to existing opportunities of instruction. While still immature in character and manhood the student will be run through the mould of a matured system which will turn him out at best an inexperienced expert.