second visit, in 1699.  John West married the daughter of Thomas Pearson, by whom he had ten children.  Of these, Benjamin was the youngest son.  His mother was a woman of great piety, and, being once in attendance upon a memorable religious revival, at which she was terribly agitated by the preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker minister, was taken with premature labor, of which Benjamin West was born.

It was predicted that a child who had been brought into the world under such circumstances would be a man of more than ordinary fame, and the good mother treasured these prophecies in her heart, and watched the career of her boy with the keenest interest.

When he was but seven years old, he was left one day to watch beside the cradle of the infant child of his eldest sister, who, though married, was still living at home.  Being unusually silent for a long time, his mother concluded that she would go and see what he was doing.  Upon entering the room where he had been left with his charge, she saw him kneeling by a chair which he had placed close up to the cradle, gazing at the infant, and making what she supposed to be marks on a paper which lay on the chair.  Stealing up behind him softly, she saw to her astonishment that this boy, only seven years old, had executed, with black and red ink and a pen, an accurate though rude likeness of the sleeping babe.  This was the first evidence he had ever given of his predilection for art, and was indeed a most surprising performance for so young a child.

[Illustration:  THE TRUANT’S SECRET DISCOVERED.]

The next summer a party of Indians came to Springfield to pay their annual visit, and to please them little Benjamin showed them some sketches of birds and flowers which he had executed with pen and ink.  The savages were delighted with them, and presented him with the red and yellow pigments with which they colored their ornaments.  In addition to this gift, they taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he added another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her laundry.  His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were ruder.  They were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a cat’s back and fastened in the end of a goose-quill.  Soon after this, a relative from Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old homestead, was struck with the talent of the little fellow, and upon his return to the city sent him a box of colors, with pencils and canvas and a few prints.  He was only nine years old, but he was a born artist.  He had never seen any painting of merit, and the few prints which his relative gave him were the most finished productions he had ever seen.  The box of colors was his most precious possession, and it opened to him new fields of enjoyment.  The day of its arrival he gave himself up entirely to the pleasure of examining it.  “Even after going to sleep,” says his biographer, “he awoke more than once during the night, and anxiously