Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the _Cat-Raphael_,
from the excellence with which he painted that animal. This peculiar
talent was discovered and awakened by chance. At the time when
Freudenberger was painting that since-published picture of the peasant
cleaving wood before his cottage, with his wife sitting by, and feeding
her child with pap out of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast
a broad stare on the sketch of this last figure, and said in his rugged,
laconic way, "That is no cat!" Freudenberger asked, with a smile, whether
Mind thought he could do it better. Mind offered to try; went into a
corner, and drew the cat, which Freudenberger liked so much that he made
his new pupil finish it out, and the master copied the scholar's work--for
it is Mind's cat that is engraven in Freudenberger's plate. Imitations of
Mind's cats are already common in the windows of printsellers.
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