With the memory of the past, similarly, such folk show wisdom. Reincarnation is an interesting theory to many; yet to recall past lives could have but one effect--to render one ineffective now. To recall the failures of a mere forty years is bad enough; to look back over a hundred lives would be disastrous: one could only sit down and cry. December had come with its cold and bitter winds, and the doctor, ever faithful, had let me up. I went for my first little walk, leaning on Boyde’s arm. Round Gramercy Park we crawled slowly, and that first taste of fresh air, the sound of wind in the leafless trees, a faint hint of the sea that reaches even the city streets, gave me an unforgettable happiness and yearning. The plan to settle in the backwoods again obsessed me. A little later I had almost persuaded the doctor, and Kay in my letters, to take up a claim north of the Muskoka Lakes where we had spent such a happy summer. Boyde was to come too--“as a sort of excitement, I suppose!” was the doctor’s bitter comment. I grew gradually stronger. Reporting was still impossible, but, introduced by Boyde, I earned something by posing in the studios. A “sitting” was three hours. Some artists paid by the hour, but Charles Dana Gibson, then drawing his weekly cartoons in _Life_, always paid for a full sitting, though he might use his model for an hour only. He was a rapid worker, and a good fellow; he never forgot to ask if one was tired of any particular attitude; my first pose to him was for a broken-down actor leaning against a hoarding covered with advertisements, the joke being something about a bill-board and a board-bill. I was thrilled when it appeared in _Life_. There was always a great rush among the models for Gibson’s studio. The only other poses I remember are swinging a golf club and sitting for a bishop’s arms and hands. I wore big sleeves. These, however, were not in Gibson’s studio. My memory of this work is dim; it was not unpleasant; only its uncertainty against it, though a good week might bring in as much as fifteen dollars. Smedley, who illustrated for _Harper’s Magazine_, was the painter we all disliked most; Cox, son of Bishop Cox, Cleveland Cox being his full name, I think, was a favourite: he was a gentleman. There was Zogbaum too, another illustrator, and there was Lynwood Palmer, the horse-painter, and leading artist on _The Rider and Driver_, a first-class weekly of that day. “Artist Palmer,” as the papers called him later, was a character. His kindness to me stands out. He had very great talent--for getting the likeness of a horse. We called him “The Horse.” He made a success at his work, painted the “King’s Horses and Men” in subsequent years, and settled down eventually--he was an Englishman--I believe, at Heston, Hounslow. His New York studio was in Fifth Avenue. Many a time he gave me food there.