ILLUSTRATIONS PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece_ Etching by Will Simmons, from a photograph by Benjamin Kimball THE OLD MANSE AT CONCORD _Facing p._ 2 SARAH ALDEN (BRADFORD) RIPLEY „ 10 EDWARD SIMMONS AT THE AGE OF SEVEN „ 16 MARY EMERSON (RIPLEY) SIMMONS „ 22 “THE CARPENTER’S SON” „ 178 “JUSTICE” „ 212 “THE THREE FATES” „ 218 “MELPOMENE” „ 236 “JANUARY” „ 258 “THE RETURN OF THE FLAGS” „ 272 “CLEANSING THE SOIL OF THE BAD ELEMENTS” „ 330 EDWARD SIMMONS AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY „ 340 Interruption If some curious reader, chancing upon this foreword to the narrative of the life of Edward Simmons, should require my reason for calling it an Interruption instead of an Introduction, I might reply with the obvious evasion that so distinguished a painter as Edward Simmons needs no introduction. The recipient of medals innumerable, and the most flattering mention in every European capital, surely should need no introduction even in his own country, many of whose public buildings and galleries are enriched by examples of his work in decoration, portraiture, or genre. But this, as I have said, would be an evasion and not my true reason for calling my preface an interruption, and since the curiosity that can drive a reader to the perusal of matter that is essentially deterrent, wholly superfluous, and probably dull must be of a persistence that will brook no gainsay, I will make a virtue of compulsion and narrate for that reader’s private enlightenment a story of a very personal nature concerning Mr. Simmons, the telling of which I had rather hoped to avoid. The story, in so far as it is related to the title of this preface, speaks for itself, and since it bears upon a personal characteristic of the painter, inherited, I am told, from generations of oratorical forebears, a characteristic which also speaks for itself, I must ask the reader to regard it as strictly confidential and to allow it to go no further. Picture then, Curious Reader, a Boston dinner party at which Mr. Edward Simmons as guest of honor is exercising without let or hindrance the lingual accomplishment bequeathed to him by generations of eloquent forebears, and demonstrating to a fresh audience that the supposed “lost art of conversation” was not so much lost as cornered.