After the decorators had been chosen for the work in the Appellate Court, the chief justice asked me to bring in some of my former contracts that he might see the form and make one for us to sign more or less like them. Then, later, he asked me to make one which I thought would serve. As the question was then vitally at issue about the copyright, I slipped in a small clause—“artist to retain the copyright.” It came back to me blue-penciled, so I saw it would be no use. Later, the chief justice gave a talk at a lunch to which I was invited, and remarked that Mr. Simmons was “not only an able painter, but a keen lawyer.” If it had not been for an accident, he would not have noticed a certain line that I had put into my contract, and I would have obtained a decision of the Appellate Court for nothing. That line would have established a precedent for the state of New York, and from that time all artists would have had and owned their copyrights. James Lord was the architect of the Appellate Court. There was great trouble because he signed out the triptych to three men when it should have been given to one. He evidently wanted to give everyone a chance, for in the other part of the building he gave one frieze to five men. Our triptych was done by Blashfield, Walker, and myself. We were to do Justice in three forms, and as the work of Blashfield and myself was more nearly alike, we put Walker in the middle. I waited until Blashfield had determined the composition, the color scheme, and even until he had actually painted his background, and then, as far as I could, I followed him. After the canvases were completed and on the wall, I found that my two figures of small boys in the foreground were not in the right place, so I painted them out and moved them up four inches higher. Blashfield went even farther. He took out a woman’s figure with her back turned and changed her completely, because he did not think she agreed with the general composition of the three. These changes were very difficult, as they were done under a different light, in a different place from the original work, and, of necessity (as the building was then in use), without the assistance of models. A remark of Richard Canfield’s on my panel is worth quoting. I have, in the foreground, a symbolism of a child pushing away the nose of a vulpine animal with his right hand, to protect a rabbit at his left. The great gambler said: “By George! Simmons, I did not know you had so much intelligence as that. That symbolism of yours is very apt: Crime, Ignorance, and Stupidity. Is that what the Appellate Court stands for?”