The color scheme of the whole room was left to me and I did the best I could with it, also outlining the panels with gold bands. Alas! as years went on, some politician, instead of leaving time to mellow it to a beautiful tone, has seen fit to retint the walls and—worse and worse—he has large plates with labels to each picture. You may as well write “horse” under a drawing of the animal as to put “Justice” under my panel. If a decoration is not intelligible to a Chinaman, there is no reason for putting it up. The Municipal Art Committee had a grand unveiling of the work, with Joseph Choate to make the address of presentation and the acceptance for the city by the District Attorney. Mr. Choate arrived early and got quite a few data from me. It may have been something about my manner, but I think it was his own disposition—which encouraged, became malignant, like the clown that slaps the face of the little boy who cries when his red apple is stolen from him; he spied me in the farthest corner, where I had retired to be out of view. Then, in his oiliest and most oratorical manner, he declaimed: “Greece had her Apelles, we have our Simmons; Rome had her Michael Angelo, we have our Simmons; etc.” The crowd applauded, but he knew that I would get the sting; it was as if he were speaking to me alone and I never forgave him. [Illustration: “THE THREE FATES” Right panel by Edward Simmons, Criminal Courts Building, New York _Copyright by Edward Simmons; from a Copley Print, Copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston_ ] Chapter X: Democracy and the Fine Arts Money, commerce and the Protestant faith have been drawbacks to the progress of the fine arts in America—the last do not believe in beauty, as do the Roman Catholics. Better than Mohammedanism, though, whose Koran does not allow the right of man to copy even the meanest of God-made creatures, the Eastern art is a constant struggle between religion and the desire to make representations of living things. Autocracy’s motto—”_væ victis_,” or to the devil with the hindmost—is the proper one for the fine arts. The taste of a whole community is the dead level of mediocrity, and a proof of the scant attention paid to art in America is the place given it in the newspapers—before the fashions and after the dog fights. Last week a statue of General Grant was unveiled with much celebration. Although the sculptor who made it had spent fifteen years of his life doing the work, there was no mention of his name in the account in the papers, but the wives of the Senators and Congressmen present were featured by photographs in the Sunday supplements. In France it is different. The committee would probably be mentioned first, but the artist’s name would come second. Public opinion rules, and the arts will come back when the people want them; and then the fact will be recorded on that thermometer—the newspapers.