It has always delighted me to see William Hunt’s hesitation about that sort of thing in his fine work for the Capitol at Albany. If he did really put breasts and a navel on the figure at the stern of the boat, they, like the decorations by the magician painter of the story, are not to be seen by vulgar eyes. Oh, those inhibitions of Boston! As my uncle George used to say, “Edward, anything but the physical or the material.” I was too young then to realize that in talking so much about it he proved his taste for it. But I am unkind; blind men should not be called to account for the spots on their clothing. Women are generally utterly ruthless where their vanity is concerned—equal suffrage is doing away with this, however—and will sacrifice the poor artist to its desires. The Ten American Painters were having a retrospective show in Philadelphia. Naturally, we were trying to get hold of all our good work, so I asked a society woman who owned one of my best paintings to lend it for exhibition purposes. She replied that she was having a tea that week and it would make a spot on her wall to take it down. This was quite a contrast to Andrew Carnegie, who not only gladly lent me a marine he had purchased some years before, but had his agent box it, insure it, and send it all at his own expense. Portrait painters have the hardest time, though, as every woman wishes to see herself idealized or as she was twenty years before. Poor Meissonier was asked to paint in Paris, a portrait of the wife of an American millionaire well known for having made his money in the gold-strike days of California. I knew the lady and I saw the portrait. It was admirable in the sense of being a perfect likeness and bringing out all of her limitations. She looked like a cook and he painted her like a cook. She refused to pay for the work, saying that it was utterly worthless; consequently, Meissonier took her into the courts. In France, the artist has a better show than here, and he won. The lady paid the bill, but announced that as soon as she got home she intended to burn the portrait. Whereupon Meissonier’s counsel asked that the court forbid this, as such an act would establish a bad precedent. It would lie within the power of a wealthy man, wishing to revenge himself, to buy up all the work of a client more than seventy years old, and, by destroying it, render the artist’s life a vain and useless thing. The court took his view and forbade the lady in question to injure the portrait. In spite of the fact that she declared she would disobey, I saw the portrait twenty years after.