My later attempts at an artistic invasion of London were no more successful than my first poor effort to paint a cockney coachman. In the year 1888 I sent two pictures to the Royal Academy which were duly accepted and hung. Imagine my joy when a large and formidable communication found its way to my studio in Paris, asking the price of one of my canvases and signed by the Chantry Bequest. This was a well-known fund created to buy pictures for the government to place in its permanent galleries, and everyone knew that, once the price had been asked, it amounted to the same thing as a sale. In fact, according to the British precedent—which is generally iron-bound, a request _was_ a sale. I replied, as they expected me to do (this was also according to rule), that my price was four hundred pounds. The picture, which I called “The Carpenter’s Son,” was a simple pose of one of my children in my studio. A blond boy with a light shining over his head sat dreaming, instead of sweeping out the shop, while his mother, in the back, told his father what a worthless son he had begotten. The shavings had accidentally fallen in the form of a cross, and the light seemed to be a halo. The _Scotsman_ came out with a scathing denunciation of the work (not at the idea, mind you) but because, as they said, I had been sacrilegious enough to paint Christ in the costume of a French peasant boy! Of course, the Chantry Bequest did not buy—for the first time—after asking the price. It was very amusing to hear that when the picture was afterward exhibited in America, a woman of the old New England type was seen standing before it and weeping, saying between sobs: “Oh, what a terrible thing! They have crucified our Saviour again!” This was more than a Concord Unitarian could understand.