One comes upon traces of this characteristic very early in his career. His own letters as well as the letters of his friends written in his youth show that, very soon after leaving “The Gunnery” at any rate, he acquired the habit of continuous application, and became an expert at it. No sooner had he made up his mind what he would do in life, than he began to do it with all his might. He felt the pressure of need, and responded to it promptly and vigorously. He lost no time, he spared no pains to train himself for his career. He realized his lack of education in art, and that he had to furnish out of himself both discipline and knowledge. There was in his mind evidently but one way to supply the defects of technical education, which to so many would have seemed insuperable obstacles. He could overcome everything by work. He knew how to “toil terribly.” He spared no time, no trial, no tasking of himself. After he had done a good day’s work in the things he was under contract to do for his employers, he would turn to work again for himself and upon schemes of his own, and would spend hours more in the most absorbing labor. If any student of his work should wonder how his swift success was won, and how he so soon made good his defects of education and training, they may find their answer in that one word--work. It was his talisman. That he had gifts, power, genius, he believed most implicitly. It was that which gave him courage; but he knew, too, that genius without work is an engine without steam. A letter which he wrote to his mother during the progress of his first drawing for the “Aldine,” of the Inness landscape is his own confession of excessive industry, and gives a glimpse at the same time of the fiery zeal and undoubting courage which possessed him.