I do not believe the ordinary politician ever considers the fine arts seriously. To him beauty is something for Sundays or holidays, and he lets the women attend to it. At least, when we were in Washington some years ago, making an attempt to have the tax on art removed, I had a chance to judge the mental weight of one Congressman. I was asked to be one of the party (as one of the minor speakers only), for I could tell what I knew of the same matter in France and England. I was fool enough to say, in the course of my argument: “This may not go down with the woolly West, but it should in the East.” Instantly a long young man, with a shock of dark hair falling over his forehead, rose and said: “What’s that, Mr. ——” (turning to his neighbor to ask my name)—“oh, Simmons? What do you know about the West, if I may ask. How far west have you ever been?” I think he took it for granted that I was born (like Sargent) on the other side. I answered: “Three years under the shadow of Mount Shasta, Mr. Bryan.” I knew William Jennings by sight and judged that he had not ventured so far from his home town as I had. He was silenced by the chairman and there was a chuckle. Anders Zorn told me two stories about Grover Cleveland, showing the extraordinary penetration and understanding of this statesman. While he was doing a portrait of the President, at one time he took the canvas and turned it upside down to look at it. To Cleveland’s questioning he replied that he was doing it to see if he had painted the book too high in value, adding: “What do you think?” “I suppose you painters use the word ‘value’ to mean the importance a thing holds in its effect upon the eye of the beholder. Yes, I think it is too high but why do you turn it upside down?” Zorn was interested. “Why do _you_ think we do?” “It must be to see it from a new point of view. To get a new conception of it all.” It was, but how keen of him to have thought it out! Zorn asked Mrs. Cleveland what her husband’s friends thought of the portrait. She replied that she did not know anyone who fitted that description, that he had many acquaintances, but no one that she could call his friend. It seems that the higher a man climbs, the farther behind he leaves his associates. Shakespeare must have been very lonely away up there on the mountain top.