This was the first colossal marble carved by an American. Fronting it on one of the buttresses of the main entrance of the Capitol, is the second, also by Greenough. It is a group called "The Rescue," and shows a pioneer saving his wife and child from being tomahawked by an Indian, while his dog watches the struggle with a strange apathy--almost with a smile. Like most of his other work, it is stilted and unconvincing; but let us remember that Greenough was the pathfinder, the trail-blazer, and as such to be honored and admired. Greenough's fame, such as it was, was soon to be eclipsed by that of a man born in the same year, but later in development because he had a harder road to travel. Hiram Powers was born into a large and poverty-stricken family. While he was still a boy, his father removed from the sterile hills of Vermont to the almost frontier town of Cincinnati, Ohio. He seems to have had little schooling, but was put to work as soon as he was old enough to contribute something toward the family exchequer. He did all sorts of odd jobs, and soon developed an unusual talent, that of modelling faces. Those were the halcyon days of the dime museum, and there was one at Cincinnati. Its proprietor chanced to hear of the boy's gift for modelling, and offered him employment as a modeller of wax figures. Of course Powers accepted, for this was work after his own heart, and he succeeded not only in producing some figures which resembled definite human beings, but "breathed the breath of life into them" by means of clock-work devices, which enabled them to move their heads and arms in a manner sufficiently jerky, but at the same time astonishing to the simple people who visited the museum to behold its wonders. Emboldened by this success, the young genius produced an "Inferno," or "Chamber of Horrors," which, when completed, was an immense success--too immense, indeed, for it had to be closed because of the fearful impression it made upon the ladies, who fainted in their escorts' arms whenever they gazed upon its terrors. One is inclined to suspect that the ladies might have withstood the horrors of the sight, but for a desire to prove their extreme sensibility. Fainting was more fashionable eighty years ago than it is to-day. Powers soon developed from this work a talent for catching likenesses, and, searching for a wider field, proceeded finally to Washington, where he modelled busts in wax of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, John Marshall, and other celebrities of the period. From wax, he naturally wished to graduate into marble, and in 1837, left America for Italy, never to return. Greenough, then laboring away at his Washington, assisted him in various ways; and Hawthorne met him in Italy and was much impressed by him, as his "Italian Note-Book" shows.