In the Capitol of Pierre, South Dakota, I painted a panel of the Lewis and Clark expedition which camped at about this place. I made the river and the bluffs, with a voyageur in a coonskin cap sitting on an overturned canoe and bargaining with an Indian who is showing him a buffalo pelt. An amusing incident, which my friends would say shows how “Simmy always falls on his feet,” is the way I painted the Indian. The librarian of the building was a great expert on Indian lore and had ferreted out much obscure knowledge, much to the annoyance of some of the painters, who were constantly having to change their figures to agree with his statements. I made an Indian with two braids of hair, but later added another, as he had his back turned and it suited my composition. This librarian wrote me an enthusiastic letter saying that he had supposed himself the only man in existence who knew that the tribe of Sioux Indians that lived in South Dakota were the only ones who wore their hair in three braids. About this time (I was sixty years old) I thought it wise to stop and take cognizance of myself. My work was too literal, too full of details, and I wondered what the causes could be. First, there was my natural timidity. As a boy, I was taught not to fight. Surrounded by women all my childhood, with natural tendencies to stay in the house and read or draw, the baby of the family and always ailing—all these circumstances kept me away from a rough-and-tumble boy’s life. I can remember only one real fight in my young days. It was when I was seven years old. I had a little spotted overcoat which in the opinion of the authorities had gotten too shabby. It must have been very old, for it was given to the small son of our washerwoman, a boy about my age. In front of the schoolhouse one day, we were coasting, when some one put a stick on the coast. I hit it and was thrown off my sled. It happened again, and I realized that it had been intentional. I lost my temper and threatened all sorts of things happening to the boy who did it, and dared him to do it again. It happened again. I was furious and told the offending boy to step out. Lo! my washerwoman’s son with my overcoat on! Of course, I was badly pummeled, but I can remember the mystic feeling of striking my spotty overcoat. Though I really was worsted in the battle, I bore but few signs of it, and as he got a black eye, when asked who won I very meanly pointed to the evidence and left the questioner to his own inference.