How the young artist acquired the name of St. John is a mystery. When he blazed into notoriety, his admirers asserted that it came to him in company with noble blood that ran in his veins; but more unkind observers declared that it was assumed, as being likely to tickle the ears of his credulous adherents. His success as a provincial art-professor was considerable. The gentry of Limerick liked his manly bearing and lively conversation, and invited him to their houses to take likenesses of their wives, flirt with their daughters, and accompany their sons on hunting and shooting excursions. Emboldened by good luck in his own country, and possibly finding the patronage of the impoverished aristocracy of an Irish province did not yield him a sufficient income, he determined to try his fortune in England. Acting on this resolve, he hastened to London, and with ingratiating manners and that persuasive tongue which nine Irishmen out of ten possess, he managed to get introductions to a few respectable drawing-rooms. He even obtained some employment from Sir Thomas Lawrence, as colour-grinder and useful assistant in the studio; and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and also of the Royal Asiatic Society. But like many an Irish adventurer, before and after him, he found it hard work to live on his impudence, pleasant manners, and slender professional acquirements. He was glad to colour anatomical drawings for the professors and pupils of one of the minor surgical schools of London; and in doing so picked up a few pounds and a very slight knowledge of the structure of the human frame. The information so obtained stimulated him to further researches, and, ere a few more months of starvation had passed over, he deemed himself qualified to cure all the bodily ailments to which the children of Adam are subject. He invented a lotion or liniment endowed with the remarkable faculty of distinguishing between sound and unsound tissues. To a healthy part it was as innocuous as water; but when applied to a surface under which any seeds of disease were lurking, it became a violent irritant, creating a sore over the seat of mischief, and stimulating nature to throw off the morbid virus. He also instructed his patients to inhale the vapour which rose from a certain mixture compounded by him in large quantities, and placed in the interior of a large mahogany case, which very much resembled an upright piano. In the sides of this piece of furniture were apertures, into which pipe-stalks were screwed for the benefit of afflicted mortals, who, sitting on easy lounges, smoked away like a party of Turkish elders.