All this is hard for the artist whose only desire is to catch and keep some of the beauty that he finds about him, and if he is forced to depend upon the sale of these dreams to provide him with bread and butter, he is quite liable to starvation or cynicism. The ordinary person cannot possibly realize how close to the wind an idealist often gets. To say that you are “broke” means nothing to the business man. I once heard one of them tell a painter friend of mine that it was all wrong for him to owe his washerwoman, that he should do, as all practical folk did, go down and hypothecate a bond! It is unethical for an artist (as it is for a professional man) to go into the courts or to advertise. He must not ask for work or show that he is hard up in any way, and, like the stage folk, he must hold his work at a high price. The distance between the price of a work of art and the money one can obtain for it is a long road, however. I was astonished to read in a newspaper, not long ago, that a picture of mine, bought by a well-known millionaire, was appraised, at his death, for exactly ten times the amount I had received for it not more than ten years before. If a man dies or goes crazy—so that the source of supply is definitely cut off—his work immediately jumps in value. I often think of John Twachtman, struggling along without any particular recognition, selling his pictures for little or nothing, and almost bankrupt when he died. His brother painters knew the value of his work and resolved to make the public see it. The dealers fought shy of it, as he had not been a popular seller when alive. Choosing the right week in February and the proper gallery (the American Art Association) such men as Thomas Dewing and Alden Weir, who commanded a position in the fine arts in this country, were joined by one of the unusual people in America—a man with a strange combination of business ability, overwhelmed by a love of beauty—Thomas W. Clarke. Twachtman’s pictures, of which there were a great many, were properly placed before the public, with the result that his bills were paid and a substantial sum realized for his widow. A number of his best canvases were reserved so that Mrs. Twachtman might have them for a nest egg.