These young men are friends of mine, and I am sure they will not object to my describing their ateliers, of which they were very proud. They believed in their own schools, and in their own ways of looking at art, and no one could laugh or argue them out of it; consequently they deserved credit for the faith that was in them. They are chiefly interesting here as showing how a young man will develop in the artistic atmosphere of Paris. It is only when he ceases to develop, and sinks into the easy lethargy of a life of pleasure there, that he becomes uninteresting. There was still another young man whom I knew there who can serve here now as an example of the American who stops in Paris too long. I first met this artist at a garden-party, and he asked me if I did not think it dull, and took me for a walk up to Montmartre, talking all the way of what a great and beautiful mother Paris was to those who worked there. His home was in Maine, and he let me know, without reflecting on his native town, that he had been choked and cramped there, and that his life had been the life of a Siberian exile. Here he found people who could understand; here, the very statues and buildings gave him advice and encouragement; here were people who took him and his work seriously, and who helped him on to fresh endeavors, and who made work a delight. "I have one picture in the Salon," he said, flushing with proper pride and pleasure, "and one has just gone to the World's Fair, and another has received an honorable mention at Munich. That's pretty good for my first year, is it not? And I'm only twenty-five years old now," he added, with his eyes smiling into the future at the great things he was to do. Nobody could resist the contagion of his enthusiasm and earnestness of purpose. He was painting the portrait of some rich man's daughter at the time, and her family took a patronizing interest in him, and said it was a pity that he did not go out more into society and get commissions. They asked me to tell him to be more careful about his dress, and to suggest to him not to wear a high hat with a sack-coat. I told them to leave him alone, and not to worry about his clothes, or to suggest his running after people who had pretty daughters and money enough to have them painted. These people would run after him soon enough, if he went on as he had begun. [Illustration: "'I HAVE ONE PICTURE IN THE SALON'"] When I saw him on the boulevards the next summer he had to reintroduce himself; he was very smartly dressed, in a cheap way, and he was sipping silly little sweet juices in front of a café. He was flushed and nervous and tired looking, and rattled off a list of the fashionable people who were then in Paris as correctly as a _Galignani_ reporter could have done it. "How's art?" I asked.