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

INTRODUCTION
full store of knowledge of history and of people. His
intimacy with Colonial history and his sympathetic and authentic translations of those times into pictures are known
and loved the world, over.
Thus to know Howard Pyle-in this country of all countries, where Washington had fought, where from the
spacious veranda we looked across the meadows upon Rocky
Hill, the very location of the deciding conflict that' sent
Washington and his men to their memorable winter at Valley
Forge-to know Howard Pyle here was a profound privilege. His accurate knowledge of the Battle of the Brandywine; his vivid word pictures of marches and countermarches, skirmishes and retreats; his anecdotes of the very
families who had seen the running fight; the tales told him
by his great-grandmother, who distinctly remembered the
retreating Continentals, trailing their muskets over the dry
fields of September, their shoeless bleeding feet wrapped
in gunny-sack-these, and a thousand other things. Enthusiastic, generous, with a marvelous knowledge of events
and a rich and versatile imagination, can you 'wonder that
we loved him?
How can I tell in words the life of the thirty or more
who lived in these historic, picturesque, rolling hills, working in the spacious and grain-scented rooms of an old gristmill? To recall the unceasing, soft rush of the water as it
flowed over the huge, silent wheel beneath us thrills me
through. I loved it. And here the teacher kept his class
intact for five glorious summers. Who of us does not
count those as golden days?
As we are slowly maturing into the various and independent ways of arriving at the solution of our personal
[Xviii]