And this in spite of the metal plate on the frame which announced the title in large letters! Another time, a Yankee girl—dripping with sentiment about my poetry of mind and deep thinking—told me of the sad picture she had seen of mine of the poor mother who, having lost her first child, was mending its little shoe in expectation of a second. I was puzzled until she mentioned the title, “No. 2.” In my earlier days, I started numbering my pictures—as a musician’s “opus”—until one of the members of my family insisted that I give it up. I had gotten as far as 1 and 2, then stopped. It was a picture of a girl in a blue calico jacket with a darker blue skirt, mending a child’s little blue varnished boot. Just a peasant I had seen; she was about ten or twelve, but I had evidently made her look older. What an astonishing explanation for my simple harmony of blues! Frank Millet used to say, “Put a Bible on the table or a letter bordered in black on the floor if you want to sell your picture at the Royal Academy,” and I think this is borne out by an incident that happened to a friend of mine in Cornwall. He was a bully fellow from a titled family which objected to his artistic tendencies. He came to me one fall, asking me what he should paint to send to the Academy, saying that it was very important that he should have a picture exhibited and sold, as his family had given him one last chance. I asked him to show me the canvas he had sent the year before. He fetched out a thing, remarking indifferently that it had been refused. “Give me five minutes and some paint,” I said, “and I’ll bet you I can fix it so that it goes in and is sold.” “What will you bet?” he asked. “Two guineas.” “Done.” It was a fairly good landscape of two tall poplars reflected in a pool in the late afternoon. I put a dab of rose on the tops of the trees and on their reflections, making the effect of a sunset light. Then I got a gold panel for the frame, painting on it in most artistic Old English lettering, these touching words: “The last sad kiss of dear departing day.” It went to the Academy; it was sold for two hundred pounds; I got my ten. Of course, everybody _knew_ where the verses came from—either Thompson’s “Seasons” or Wordsworth, etc.—and I was perfectly willing to let the dead poets have the credit for such sentimentality. Chapter VIII: Summer Adventurings _I. Carrière St.-Denis_