Sometimes he would write out these stories and read them to his father after supper, standing up between the folding doors of the library, acting out the whole narrative with furious gestures.

Once he even wrote a little poem which seriously disturbed the Old Gentleman, filling him with formless ideas and vague hopes for the future.
In a suitable environment Vandover might easily have become an author, actor or musician, since it was evident that he possessed the fundamental _afflatus_ that underlies all branches of art.

As it was, the merest chance decided his career.
In the same library where he had found the famous encyclopaedia article was "A Home Book of Art," one of those showily bound gift books one sees lying about conspicuously on parlour centre tables.

It was an English publication calculated to meet popular and general demand.

There were a great many full-page pictures of lonely women, called "Reveries" or "Idylls," ideal "Heads" of gipsy girls, of coquettes, and heads of little girls crowned with cherries and illustrative of such titles as "Spring," "Youth," "Innocence." Besides these were sentimental pictures, as, for instance, one entitled "It Might Have Been," a sad-eyed girl, with long hair, musing over a miniature portrait, and another especially impressive which represented a handsomely dressed woman flung upon a _Louis Quinze_ sofa, weeping, her hands clasped over her head.