The English are sentimental, though—especially where they do not understand—and, yes, I shall have to admit it, so are we of New England. Sitting in the drawing-room of a prominent British woman, I was astonished to hear her say, upon the announcement that a pianist was about to play a well-known selection of Mendelssohn: “Songs Without any Words! What a pity!” In painting they prefer canvases that have some literary significance; a story with a heart appeal frequently attracts more attention than a far greater work that is more abstract. The year after Sargent had exhibited his “El Jaleo” in the Salon, his close friend, Ralph Curtis, was bothered to death by all the busybodies who wanted to know what the next picture would be. One day Curtis answered: “I’ll tell you. Sargent is painting, for the Salon, a circle of naked women sitting on red velvet cushions, called ‘Daughters of Sin.’” “But he can’t send it to the Academy afterward,” they cried. “Oh yes, he can!” replied Curtis. “He’ll just change the title to ‘Waiting for the Omnibus,’ and they will never think to look at the painting.” There was always a great deal of talk about Sargent’s titles. At Paris in ’89, I was dining at Stanley Reinhart’s with a number of men when some one spoke of the portrait painter’s Academy picture of that year. It was a beautiful thing of girls hanging Japanese lanterns in a garden of flowers at twilight. They said he had called it, “Carnation, lily, lily, rose.” I said at once, “Damnation, silly, silly, pose.” They thought it quite a joke, and some one wrote to Abbey about it, who answered that Luke Fildes had made that remark three weeks ago. His thought must have been almost simultaneous with mine, he in England and I in France. This shows how people may be falsely accused of plagiarism. Of my own pictures, there was one of an old man with two children gazing out to sea, which I had named “Low Tide.” My mother called upon the English tailor who bought it, as she had never happened to see it. He was very polite and treated her with great reverence, and then proceeded to explain her son’s work to her. “You see, the old man has just returned from sea and the little girl has laid her hand on his arm, telling him that his daughter and her mother—has passed away during his absence. It is called, ‘Mother’s Dead.’”