Two months later he was at breakfast in the dining-room at Richmond
Hill,--with Theo probably pouring out his "dish of coffee,"--when a
vast disturbance arose downstairs. A roughly dressed lad had presented
himself at the front door and insisted on seeing Colonel Burr, in
spite of all the resistance of his manservant. At last he succeeded in
forcing his way past, and made his appearance in the breakfast-room,
followed by the startled and indignant servant. Burr did not recognise
him in the least, but the youth walked up to him, pulled a shirt--of
country make but quite clean--out of his coat pocket, and held it out.
Immediately it all came back to Burr, and he was delighted by the
simplicity with which the wagon-maker's apprentice had taken him at
his word. No one could play the benefactor more generously when he
chose, and he lost no time in sending Vanderlyn to Paris to study art.
So brilliantly did the young man acquit himself in the _ateliers_
there that within a very few years he was the most distinguished of
all American painters in Europe.
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