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

PHILOSOPHER AND MYSTIC
present puzzles me; and in Ciceronian-Catalinian language,
is evasive and elusive.
"11'But enough-although much more thinking must be
done, even if talking stops. I shall ruminate and reflect
much.'"1
In reply to another one of Canfield's letters Howard
Pyle gives a very interesting sidelight on some of the
other criticisms which were not so favorable:
IC-0 judge from your letter to Dr. MacCracken that
he has taken some exception to the rather hard and unlovely
characterization I have felt obliged to give my image of the
Christ. He is not the only one who has taken such exception.
"I may say that I purposely made my picture of the
Master in that guise because, looking upon Him with the
eyes of a Pharisee, that would be the way in which I would
behold Him. For so it was that He appeared to all the
Scribes, Pharisees, and Levites of His day. If I had made
Him otherwise I would not have told my story with the
fidelity that is its only excuse. Had I made Him unrepellant it would not at all have demonstrated why it was that
He was rejected of intelligent men.
"I suppose this point, though obvious, is rather subtle.
At any rate it has been widely overlooked by many of my
friends. One unusually intelligent critic said to me, 'I do
not see that it would matter whether one did or did not accept a belief in such a Christ as that-,' entirely overlooking
the fact that his own remark was the strongest corroborative
proof possible of the contention in my book. For I think I
may say that I have not in any particular departed from the
exact and literal statement of the facts as we have them.
*It may also, perhaps, be incidentally interesting to you
['97]