in 1872-the 3d of the month it was, for I remember how patriotic we became as morning drew near. And it had drawn disgracefully near before all the tales were told and all the songs sung by the convivial crowd, among whom I remember Elihu Vedder and Charles Caryll Coleman, neither of whom needs an introduction to artists. At the long table also sat George Simmons, the English sculptor whose "Falconer" adorns a rocky knoll in Central Park. Rhinehart was a sculptor of great promise, but alas! he died not long afterward, when just achieving fame. The name of my next neighbor was Augustus Saint-Gaudens. His personality strongly impressed me, and there and then began a friendship destined to last till the day of his death.

When my new-found friend and I sallied out after dinner we found Vedder sitting on one of the large stones at the corner of the Via Frattina and the Piazza di Spagni, gazing with solemn attention at the moon as it hung in quiet glory over the Pincian Hill. Dawn was just touching the skies and the chill of early morning was in the air. But from that position not all the expostulations of Saint-Gaudens and myself could budge Vedder, and after a time we forbore and left him still sitting on his stone in silent contemplation. The next day I departed for Venice and a year passed before I could renew my acquaintance with Saint-Gaudens.

The end of a year saw us both on this side of the Atlantic, and many were the experiences we had in New York in the old building on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. It still is occupied by the German Savings Bank, but in those days there were a number of vacant up-stairs rooms used as studios. We each rented one of these, and for several years I saw him almost daily; discouraging and depressing years they were for him, although maybe not really so hard as the earlier ones he had spent as a student at the Beaux Arts.

Saint-Gaudens had been working for some time on a small recumbent female figure, which was finally cast in plaster and sent to the Academy of Design. It was rejected. He had also before this, in Rome, made a marble figure of "Silence" for a masonic temple, but the masons,

knowing little of art, didn't like it and were prevailed upon to accept it only after he had spent weary weeks at work, himself cutting and chipping the marble after it was already in place. They now congratulate themselves, it is said, on having known enough to secure the work of a great sculptor!

The father of Saint-Gaudens was a shoemaker who kept his shop next to the old Academy of Design in Fourth Avenue. I often met him. He was an erect old Frenchman with a fine, leonine head, an aristocratic bearing, and good blood in his veins, I am sure. Neither did he have any regular education to speak of, though his active mind readily acquired bits of knowledge, and later on in life he was a very well educated man. At the time of which I speak, however, he was innocent of even an acquaintance with many of the masterpieces of literature. He once asked me where he could find an accurate story of Moses. Rather amused, I lent him the obvious book. Late that night he came back into my studio in a great state of excitement, carrying in his hand the Bible I had lent him. 'I've never read this before," he exclaimed. "It's the most remarkable thing I have ever seen."

Saint-Gaudens often told me of the trials he had suffered as apprentice to a cameocutter, a Frenchman, who spent his holidays and Sundays in shooting snipe on the Weehawken Flats. The young craftsman was compelled to walk all day, lugging his master's game-bag and running after the snipe he shot. Never would he admit, even in confidence, that the bag was a heavy one, so loath was he to give "that fellow" credit for anything; but there is not much hazard in the guess that snipe were then in a more flourishing condition on the "Flats" than is the case to-day, and that the sport was pretty good-for the master.

Cameo-cutting was soon abandoned, but not before Saint-Gaudens had become very skilful at the trade. This training I have no doubt greatly influenced his whole artistic career. Upon returning to America after his first trip abroad he was desperately poor, and during most of one winter he and the sculptor Palmer slept in a store-room on the same floor as our

studios, using as beds the great empty packing-boxes of some furniture that had come to me from Italy.

In those days Mr. Robert Gordon's house was a rendezvous of artists and their friends, for every winter Mr. Gordon gave a large reception, with a splendid spread, to which the artists considered it quite the thing to be invited. Entirely different from any of the present-day functions, they were a distinct feature of New York life, and were looked forward to from year to year. To one of these I obtained an invitation for Saint-Gaudens, and while we were there introduced him to Doctor Noyes, the famous surgeon and oculist. The conversation having turned upon hospitals, Saint-Gaudens related to Doctor Noyes how once he had cut a long gash in his arm and as a result had been carried to a hospital near by. Pulling up his sleeve he showed the scar. Doctor Noyes said: "I remember the wound as distinctly as I do the brave little boy. I was the doctor who sewed it up!"

In his younger days Saint-Gaudens was shy and avoided somewhat the company of the great, and he described to me as one of his early trials his modelling of a bust of a distinguished diplomat. This gentleman's doctor had ordered him to soak his feet, so when he posed for my friend he sat wrapped up in a blanket on a high chair, his feet stuck in a tub of water which it was part of Saint-Gaudens's duty to keep hot. When the bust was well under way. Saint-Gaudens noticed that the distinguished diplomat kept bringing the conversation around to Socrates and Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Plato. The reason for this was not long obscure. "I find," said the D. D., "after a careful examination, that all these great and distinguished men had very broad foreheads. Just broaden mine a bit." So Saint-Gaudens, afraid to object, meekly complied. Repeated urgings and the resultant broadenings brought the forehead finally to the point where it seemed to be affected with some dreadful swelling disease. But this did not bring complete satisfaction to the heart of the sitter. He suggested that these same great forerunners of his were also notable for having had very deep-set eyes. So poor Saint-Gaudens was forced

to bore and bore, deeper and deeper, until he almost pierced through to the back. He told me this story with great excitement, interspersing in the narrative many uncomplimentary remarks on celebrities in general, and illustrating it all by puffing out his cheeks and making violent boring gestures with his forefinger. He said he'd give anything to get hold of that bust and smash it to atoms.

By nature modest and retiring, nothing bored him more than to be thrust forward, especially if the particular kind of torture happened to be public speaking. His literary style was terse and vivid, and he showed it to advantage in his letters, frequently illustrating them, too, with humorous scraps of drawings and using for signature a caricature of his own long profile. His manners were always most attractive, but he cared little for dress and despised all its affectations. I remember that he bore a particular grudge against the pointed shoes that used to be fashionable, and was continually making fun of mine. But this lack of interest in clothes did not hinder him from admirably depicting them, as witness the Farragut and Lincoln statues. La Farge told me he thought Saint-Gaudens in his Lincoln had obtained the most successful result that he had ever seen in the struggle of dealing artistically with the problem of modern dress.

In 1877 Saint-Gaudens modelled a small bas-relief of me, the first of the interesting medallions he afterward often made. La Farge came in to look at it and remarked: "It looks just like Armstrong-face all tied up in a knot." Years later it was exhibited at the Salon, where with other works of the then famous sculptor it received honorable mention-yet SaintGaudens when he made it held but a trivial place in the eyes of the world and for some time had difficulty in making a living.

Soon after this Mrs. Edward King thought of erecting a monument at Newport in memory of her husband, and I, having introduced Saint-Gaudens to La Farge, suggested to her that they would form an excellent pair to execute the work. They were promptly engaged, and this was the first really successful order secured by Saint-Gaudens. Soon

after their first meeting La Farge asked Saint-Gaudens and me to dine with him in his old Tenth Street studio, and the plans for the beautiful King monument resulted from their discussion at that time. He finished work on it in Paris, whither I went in the spring of 1878, just in time to see him putting on the final touches. I was there as director of American Fine Arts at the exhibition of that year, and during the time it lasted I lived with Saint-Gaudens in his apartment at 3 Rue Herschel, in the Latin Quarter. His studio was close by in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, in a huge old dance-hall, and high up in the gallery there a couple of other artists and I often painted, much amused at the alternate waves of exultation and despair that swept over him as he worked. That summer Augustus started his brother Louis at work, and it was in the old dance-hall that the latter modelled his first head. Saint-Gaudens made for me a little bas-relief portrait of my daughter, besides finishing some other small pieces of work, but his best efforts that summer were spent on the Farragut statue, which kept him busy for some time to come.

His Farragut working model was set up in the centre of the room, while the rest of us painted in the gallery, once occupied I suppose by the orchestra. Thence at odd times were wafted snatches of song that might have startled even the waltzing Parisians of the old days; from one corner would resound a mellow bass:

"You secure the old man;
I'll bind the gur-r-l."

And the couplet would be completed antiphonally from another remote quarter:

"Once aboard the lugger she is mine!" Saint-Gaudens always made it "lubber," and we could not laugh him out of this unnautical substitution.

One of our lively circle was young Bloomer, always amusing and very talkative. He insisted upon singing whenever he painted and he painted steadily. One day somebody called out: "I'm all through. Come on, fellows: let's go out to Fontainebleau and hear Bloomer paint." Various bets were chalked up as to whether or not we would find Bloomer

performing to his usual musical accompaniment; of course he was.

I asked Saint-Gaudens to help me hang the American pictures in the exposition and had him appointed by the commissioner-general. This work, as he afterward described it, was "something like a battle." A large number of these pictures had been selected in New York by a distinguished committee of American connoisseurs. All these gentlemen, being amateurs and patrons of art but none of them actual painters, wanted only pictures by "leading artists." So I, who acted as a sort of adviser and buffer between the artists and the committee, had difficulty in persuading them to accept pictures by some men who had not the reputation they afterward acquired, but who even then unquestionably were worthy of representing the United States at the Paris Exposition-notably Winslow Homer and John La Farge. (The latter's picture, named "Paradise Valley," received an honorable mention.) Even at the end there were still a number of the younger and best artists who were left unrepresented.

Some pictures were selected by SaintGaudens and myself after our arrival in Paris, these mainly being the work of the students there. Thus our duties and responsibilities were very mixed and it naturally followed that we got the criticism for all the sins of omission, though in reality we were responsible only for those pictures accepted in Paris and for the hanging. The third man on our committee was Mr.

—, always referred to by the newspapers as "The Great American Connoisseur," a name he never after succeeded in getting rid of. He soon became rather terrified, I imagine, at having to do anything, and refused to come to the meetings or to countenance any of our actions, saying that we were too young and too radical-"perfect iconoclasts,' as he expressed it.

It must be admitted that we partly earned this title, for when we came to hang the pictures we placed those we considered best on the line and the worst near the ceiling, entirely irrespective of the names or reputations of the various artists concerned; there, Saint-Gaudens remarked, the latter would do the least

harm. This was unprecedented. Result: we displeased a great many of the artists, for some of the great were "skied." For example, Bloomer, who had never before had a picture exhibited, sent a very nice landscape and we hung it on the line. This sort of thing upset some people, and of course we came in for our share of criticism, but on the whole the exhibit made a good impression, and unprejudiced people, especially foreigners, said it was the best made by the United States up to that time. Later on, Russell Sturgis saw our completed work and expressed his entire approval. But for the purpose of showing that even the ordinary American criticism was not all adverse, the following quotations from an editorial in the New York Times seem amusing enough not to be out of place:

These young persons have struck terror to the heart of the American colony by judging pictures on the ground of artistic merit displayed in them, regarded by such lights as they possess. Carried away by their mistaken enthusiasm for pure art, they have rejected pictures of great size, which show, almost as faithfully as a colored photograph, miles and miles of our unequalled Western landscape. They have failed to appreciate the genius of a man who samples a large tract of country, and condenses his samples into a "Heart of" or "Soul of " this or that country. They have

made the pitiable mistake of supposing the size of, and length of time occupied in the painting of, a picture, has little or nothing to do with its artistic merit. Pride of intellect and vainglory of the artistic temperament can go no farther. Their downfall is certain.

On the other hand, it may be urged that an expurgated show of American art is a novel and refreshing thing, which cannot fail to impress well those Europeans whose good opinion is of value. It may be said that the academical American painter is a nuisance at which the judges in Europe laugh heartily; and also that many absurd pictures are every year admitted to the Salon. But if things are sifted to the bottom, it will readily be seen how hollow all such arguments

are.

What was this committee appointed for? To select and hang a collection of paintings represent ative of the present state of American art. Mark that word, representative. How have they done it? By neglecting the bad and taking the good. Now, American art is mostly bad. Ergo, the exhibition is not representative of the present state of American art. They ought to be taught that America never puts her best foot forward, and does not want to be represented otherwise than by mediocrities. As it is, we may leave them to the results of their ignorance and temerity. The American colony in Paris has plenty of time on its hands, and will probably make the lives of the committee a burden to them.

Saint-Gaudens was always frank; he made it a point of honor when asked. about any work of art to answer exactly as he thought. One day we had been in the Russian gallery, where hung a gaudy and thoroughly bad picture which we both agreed in disliking. As we were coming out some people whom SaintGaudens knew slightly buttonholed him and asked about that particular picture, whether he didn't admire it immensely. He briefly admitted that he did, and escaped.

"Saint-Gaudens," I said, as we walked along, "you're not living up to your principles. That's a bad picture and you know it."

Turning abruptly around, without a word he hurried after the people and called out: "I beg your pardon, sir, I shouldn't have said that was a good picture: I know for a fact that it's dreadful!"

The

We had the naming of the juror for the United States on the International Board of Awards, and after some consideration it seemed to us that no man could be better fitted for the place than Frank D. Millet. We accordingly recommended him, and most acceptable he proved to the other jurors because of his engaging personality and varied talents. chairman of the jury was Sir Frederick Leighton, a handsome and attractive gentleman, well qualified for the difficult position he held not only on account of his ability as an artist but also through the wonderful linguistic powers he possessed. I heard that at the meetings he spoke to the jurors of the many different nations each in his own tongue.

One amusing incident connected with the exhibition sticks in my memory. On the day that it opened all the officials assembled in state before their respective buildings while President MacMahon, accompanied by his magnificent suite, walked down the Avenue of Nations, stopping before the different houses in turn and congratulating the commissioners. Young Captain Rogers, in charge of the United States marines at the exposition, was standing in a brilliant cavalry uniform with Commissioner-General McCormick and other American officials in the space before our building. To Marshal