With the early end of his school days Augustus turned to the actual earning of his daily bread. He was thirteen years old. To his father’s question as to what kind of work appealed most strongly to him he had answered, “I should like it if I could do something which would help me to be an artist.” It was a decision that must have seemed strange to the father, who perhaps had seen in the boy a possible assistant in his growing business; but wisely he respected the desire that Augustus expressed, and a few weeks later the boy was apprenticed to a Frenchman named Avet, the first stone-cameo cutter in America. A cameo is a fine relief of a human head, or the head of an animal, cut in a stone or shell, often so done as to show the design in a layer of one color with another color as a background. The stones, which were usually amethysts or malachite, were at that period extremely fashionable, and were worn in rings, or scarf-pins, or breast-pins by men and women. The work was fine and required skill and patience and artistic ability; so for a long time Augustus was limited to the preparation of the stones, which Avet would finish and later sell to the leading jewelers of the city. Avet was a hard taskmaster and the monotonous labor over the whirring lathe was irksome to the red-blooded boy, who looked up from the spinning-wheel at the white clouds sailing across the little window above him and heard the rumble of wheels and the hum of life in the distant street. But in his few hours of leisure there were glimpses of stirring events never to be forgotten. There was the excitement attending the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, “Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter.” There was the recruiting of troops for the great Civil War which for four long years racked the land. And later, from the window in front of his lathe, Saint-Gaudens watched the volunteers from New England as they tramped down Broadway, singing “John Brown’s Body” as they marched. Day after day Saint-Gaudens ground and turned the stones on his lathe, and all day long he listened to the voice of Avet, scolding and swearing as he worked. One day came the breaking-point. At noon the boy had quietly eaten his luncheon from the little box which he brought each morning with him to his work. Some crumbs had fallen on the floor, and Avet, seeing them, burst into a fury and discharged him on the spot. Without comment he folded up his overalls, left the shop, and going at once to his father’s store, explained exactly what had occurred. Within a few minutes Avet followed, apologetic and promising even more money if the boy would return. Without hesitation Saint-Gaudens refused, and in later life he often recalled his father’s “proud smile” as he made his decision.