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

ITALY AND THE END
back in Florence again. The city has a great fascination for
me. And I have far more personal liberty there than here;i
everywhere here are high stone walls that shut out the
property from the highroads. This insures privacy but it
confines one within a certain limit which I find to be very
depressing and personally annoying. I like to wander, as
I do in America over hill and dale and through fields and
valley, but I cannot do it here at all without coming plump
against a wall nine feet high. Some of the roads are very
picturesque, but they do not take the place of the quiet fertility of nature.. 0.)
As one can see from the foregoing extracts, there were
times when he felt to the full the charms of Italy;i those
were days when he might almost be said to have regained
his youthful zest. But these were the exceptions. Depression was continually seizing him; he could work but little,
and idleness was so strange to him that he found it unpleasant. Then to add disappointment to his physical difficulties,
he found that the architects from whom he was expecting
contracts were either placing them in other hands or deciding
not to use mural decorations. This was a terrific blow, for
not only had be planned the Italian trip largely to further
the painting of those pictures, but also he was depending to a
certain extent upon the funds with which they would provide him. Everything seemed to be conspiring to make him
unhappy.
After leaving San Domenico, he spent a few weeks in
Siena, where he was comparatively well. But on his return
from Florence he had a sharp bilious attack, which left him
in a much more serious condition than he had been before,
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