Excerpt from Life of George P. A Healy With the audacity of a beginner little Healy painted her laughing, just as he saw her laugh on that memorable day. In spite of his extraordinary facility, of his success also, my father understood perfectly that his artistic education was very insufficient. He determined to go to Paris and to study hard. He did not know a word of French; he had no idea what sort of difficulties he might encounter in a strange land; moreover, he had to provide for his mother and the younger children - his father had died - and take with him a little money for his own immediate wants. All this was rather stag gering; but nothing ever staggered him. In 1834, before he was twenty - one years old, he took passage on a sailing vessel for Havre. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.