All the world is striving to manufacture what the people want, but an artist is in an entirely different position. There is no value to a picture at the pawnbroker’s. You can borrow practically nothing on a Corot; you can get more on the frame than on the canvas. One day when I was very hard up, a young architect from Paris who was building the New Amsterdam Theater here telephoned me that Mr. Finn had recommended me to do some work for him. It appears that he had made a contract with a certain painter for a series of panels representing the development of the North River. Although the contract had been running two years and the theater was to open in two weeks, the painter had only half finished the work. There was nothing to do, as the theater _must_ open, and Mr. Finn had told him I was the only man who could do them in a hurry, but he would have to pay a stiff price. I asked him what I thought was fair (I never know what my work is worth), and choosing the subjects, running from Eric the Red to the last international yacht race, I began. I was living at that time in a studio which had formerly been a stable, with a cement floor graded to the central hole, where there was an outlet to the sewer. Just before this the sewer had become stopped up and, as it had rained heavily, the water had gathered on the studio floor. There was no time to fix it; I had only two weeks to do six panels, each one more than five feet long, and could not have the plumbers messing around. Of course, I had no money to hire another place to work. I had a time! Every morning I raced to the Library to look up the historical facts, and then came home to make my compositions. All this while there were four inches of water on a level all over the floor, a line of bricks to walk from my easel to my painting table, and another line from the table back to where I could get a point of view of my work. Of necessity, from the door to the bed was a third brick pathway. Every now and then, in the excitement of creation, I would fall off of my improvised bridges and drench my feet. But youth is lucky and I escaped pneumonia—also I finished the panels in time. At another time in my life, I found myself with a lot of pictures and no money. There were four people depending upon me, no work, and nothing I could realize upon. On awakening one morning I discovered that the entire capital of the group was one nickel, which I found in a baby’s bank. This had been robbed sundry times before, but the little coin had somehow been missed. It was necessary to do something, and that immediately. A friend who had dined with us the evening before upon a stew made of thirty-five cents’ worth of beef neck and some potatoes had suggested that a certain elderly banker, the silent partner of a well-known financier, had just “turned down” a proposition made to him for an overmantel decoration. The artist had asked too much and my friend suggested that I go and make a bid.