“I used often to provoke my good old master,” said Stuart to Dunlap, “though, heaven knows, without intending it. You remember the color closet at the bottom of his painting-room. One day, Trumbull and I came into his room, and little suspecting that he was within hearing, I began to lecture on his pictures, and particularly upon one then on his easel. I was a giddy, foolish fellow then. He had begun a portrait of a child, and he had a way of making curly hair by a flourish of his brush, thus, like a figure of three. “Here, Trumbull,” said I, “do you want to learn how to paint hair? There it is, my boy! Our master figures out a head of hair like a sum in arithmetic. Let us see--we may tell how many guineas he is to have for this head by simple addition,--three and three make six, and three are nine, and three are twelve--” How much the sum would have amounted to, I can’t tell, for just then in stalked the master, with palette-knife and palette, and put to flight my calculations. “Very well, Mr. Stuart”--he always _mistered_ me when he was angry, as a man’s wife calls him _my dear_, when she wishes him to the d----l,--“Very well, Mr. Stuart! very well indeed!” You may believe that I looked foolish enough, and he gave me a pretty sharp lecture, without my making any reply. But when the head was finished, there were no _figures of three in the hair_.” “Mr. West,” says Stuart, “treated me very cavalierly on one occasion: but I had my revenge. My old master, who was always called upon to paint a portrait of his majesty for every governor-general sent out to India, received an order for one for Lord ----. He was busily employed upon one of his _ten-acre_ pictures, in company with prophets and apostles, and thought he could turn over the king to me. He could never paint a portrait. “‘Stuart,’ said he, ‘it is a pity to make his majesty sit again for his picture; there is the portrait of him that you painted; let me have it for Lord ----. I will retouch it, and it will do well enough.’ ‘_Well enough!_ very pretty,’ thought I; ‘you might be civil, when you ask a favor.’ So I _thought_; but I _said_, ‘Very well, sir.’ So the picture was carried down to his room, and at it he went. I saw he was puzzled. He worked at it all that day. The next morning, ‘Stuart,’ says he, ‘have you got your palette set?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Well, you can soon set another; let me have it; I can’t satisfy myself with that head.’