LUTHER DANIELS BRADLEY
pleasures, such as pigeon-shooting south of Evanston, in regions now covered by apartment buildings and business blocks, or exploring wild places west of the Skokie, or driving old Frank, the family's amiable white horse, through the Wilmette forests. Better yet, he loved to sprawl in the sand and listen to the yams of the Evanston life-saving crew. Capt. Lawson, for so many years in charge of the station, took a fancy to Luther Bradley, and taught him how to sail a catboat. He taught him, too, to delight in a keen wind casting spray in one's face, while one shoots over whitecaps toward a misty horizon. And not only then, but always, Luther Bradley loved battles of that kind; loved the water, and its hardships and its romance.
Sometime in this period of growing up, perhaps on winter evenings when the lake was frozen, and the woods impassable, Luther developed a knack of drawing pictures. It was more knack than genius, and it made him when quite small the especial, exclusive artist for the Misses Bradley; but that is all. His father looked benevolently upon art as a pastime, but he did not encourage it as a serious matter. Luther had a few drawing lessons before the family moved to Evanston, taking them of a north side lady. They were the kind of lessons during which one works at a lop-sided peach, or a tortured hand. Afterward he had no art instruction whatever. He was just a gay, clear-eyed youth, full of pranks, who might be anything when he grew up, but who it was hoped would be a real estate man. As one old friend put it the other day, "Luther Bradley always seemed too much of a kid ever to be famous, to have a career." But perhaps it was even because he was so much of a kid, a happy boy his whole life long, that he achieved a career—yes, and fame.
AFTER preparation at Lake Forest Academy, and some study at Northwestern University, Luther Bradley was enrolled at Yale College in the class of '77. It was expected he would go through to graduation, and thus form one more of the famous line of "Yale Bradleys." His experience
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