CHAPTER VIII.
FITTING MYSELF INTO MY SPHERE .-- AGE, 22, 23.
During all my girlhood I saw no pictures, no art gallery, no studio, but had learned to feel great contempt for my own efforts at picture-making.
A traveling artist stopped in Wilkinsburg and painted some portraits; we visited his studio, and a new world opened to me.

Up to that time portrait painting had seemed as inaccessible as the moon--a sublimity I no more thought of reaching than a star; but when I saw a portrait on the easel, a palette of paints and some brushes, I was at home in a new world, at the head of a long vista of faces which I must paint; but the new aspiration was another secret to keep.
Bard, the wagon-maker, made me a stretcher, and with a yard of unbleached muslin, some tacks and white lead, I made a canvas.

In the shop were white lead, lampblack, king's yellow and red lead, with oil and turpentine.

I watched Bard mix paints, and concluded I wanted brown.
Years before, I heard of brown umber, so I got umber and some brushes and begun my husband's portrait.

I hid it when he was there or I heard any one coming, and once blistered it badly trying to dry it before the fire, so that it was a very rough work; but it was a portrait, a daub, a likeness, and the hand was his hand and no other.