Much more important to American art is the work of Olin Levi Warner, the son of an itinerant Methodist preacher, whose wanderings prevented the boy getting any regular schooling. During his childhood, he had shown considerable talent for carving statuettes in chalk, and he finally decided to immortalize his father by carving a portrait bust of him. For a stone, he "set" a barrel of plaster in one solid mass and then, breaking off the staves, began hacking away at it with such poor implements as he could command. It was a well-nigh endless task, but "it's dogged that does it," and the boy worked doggedly away until the bust was completed. It was considered such a success that young Warner, convinced of his vocation, set to work to earn enough money to go abroad. For six years he worked as a telegrapher, and it was not until 1869, when he was twenty-five years old, that he had saved the money needed. Three years later he returned to New York, and opened a studio, but met with a reception so dismal and indifferent that, after a four years' desperate struggle, he was forced to abandon the fight and return to his father's farm. Anxious for any employment, he applied to Henry Plant, President of the Southern Express Company, for work. Mr. Plant was interested, and instead of offering him a job as messenger or teamster, gave him a commission for two portrait busts. It was the turning point in Warner's career, for the busts he produced were of a craftsmanship so delicate and beautiful that they at once established his position among his fellow-sculptors, though years elapsed before he received any wide public recognition. The truth is that he was too great and sincere an artist to cater to a public taste which he had himself outgrown; so that, until quite recently, he has remained a sculptor's sculptor. His untimely death, in 1896, from the effects of a fall while riding in Central Park, brought forth a notable tribute from his fellow-craftsmen, and students of sculpture have come to recognize in him one of the most delicate and truly inspired artists in our history. But the most powerful influence in the recent development of American sculpture has been that great artist, Augustus Saint Gaudens. Born in 1848, at Dublin, Ireland, of a French father and an Irish mother, he was brought to this country while still an infant. Perhaps this mixed ancestry explains to some degree Saint Gaudens's peculiar genius. At the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter in New York City, and worked for six years at this employment, which demands the utmost keenness of vision, delicacy of touch, and refinement of manner. His evenings he spent in studying drawing, first at Cooper Union and then, outgrowing that, at the National Academy of Design. So it happened that, at the age of twenty, when most men were just beginning their special studies, Saint Gaudens was thoroughly grounded in drawing and an expert in low relief.