Howard Pyle, a chronicle by Charles D. Abbott, with an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle's works.

HOWARD PYLE: A CHRONICLE
people are smarter than they look.' At least, that is what
is beginning to dawn upon me. When you begin to enquire of a Pennsylvania Dutchman about things with which
he thinks you have no business and which concern him, his
face assumes a stony 'expressionless expression,' so to speak,
most exasperating and most hopeless to an impatient nature. My aged friend Pfautz showed himself quite agile
and intelligent this morning. He talked to me and gave
me quite an amount of information.
"He took me up to the Cloisters and pointed out the
different buildings, giving quite a little lecture upon them.
He took me in and introduced me to the chief sister, pleading in the most engaging fashion for permission for me to
sketch. He took me around and introduced me to the
minister, also pleading with him, and finally got full and
limitless permission to make all the sketches I wanted.
They told me yesterday that the chapel was locked upso it was, but there was a back entrance and by that I was
inserted.
"I think I can say without vanity that I made a complete
'mash' of the chief sister. I talked to her in the sweetest
way I was capable of doing, and she answered me in English
as broken as ancient Italian china. She was a very fat,
dumpy specimen of humanity about sixty years old. She
showed me all about the chapel and the cookhouse at the
rear where the soup is cooked for the love feasts. She took
me upstairs and downstairs, into crumbling cubbies and
moulding pantries. We ascended grasping a rope in lieu
of a banister. She introduced me to the other sisters of
which there were three, exhibited my sketches and assumed
complete ownership of yours truly. She showed me old
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