bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth--or else they
tell of a time when he loved a woman.

The first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have been made
forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and untruth
creep easily into their accounting. All literature and all art are
secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the
color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. And so it happens that
all art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that
childhood does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it
is past and adolescence lies between. Then maturity gives back to the man
the childhood that is gone forever.

Many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the
impressions of childhood. Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and I'll name you
another--James Whitcomb Riley--have written immortal books with the
autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof.

Gustave Dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts,
feelings and experiences--all well colored with the stuff that dreams are
made of.

The background of every good Dore picture is a deep wood or mountain-pass
or dark ravine. The wild, romantic passes of the Vosges, and the sullen
crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his mind, just
as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and held his
breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches.

His tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bough held down with weight
of dew, are startlingly true. The great roots of giant trees, denuded by