And this man’s productions go all over the United States, in many obscure and out-of-the-way places. They are the only specimens (besides those atrocities—the Sunday colored supplements) that the people have upon which to form an artistic taste. Then there is that tendency to “follow de crowd.” We all have it, and in attempting to get away from it resort to the other extreme, resulting in so-called Cubism and Futurism, etc. We are like the sheep I saw on Scott’s ranch in California. Although for two generations the rail fence leading from one field to another had not existed, these creatures still skipped in the empty air, just as did their grandfathers long ago. We are the same, else why do sculptors make statues in marble when there is an abundance of wonderful jasper in this country? Tradition and the Greeks say so. I have no quarrel with the man who goes to the other extreme, provided he first learns what the world has found out, up to his time, about his art, and then chooses to differ. He may possibly add something. But if he insists upon being ignorant, it is like the Sultan’s order to his general to burn the library at Alexandria. “If the books agree with the Koran, they are needless; if they disagree, they are wicked. Burn them.” We speak of Realism and Idealism—it seems to me that we just go around in circles and all such discussion is futile. First, we dig with our noses, like the ground hog, producing Realism; then we gradually climb up, going through all the stages of Idealism, Super-idealism, Æstheticism, and Euphuism. Then bang! we drop back again to the ground hog and dig for the truth. Kenyon Cox gave us the best idea of this question that I know of. He said (to paraphrase): “Every honest worker is striving to realize his ideal. He maintains, if he succeeds, that he has produced Realism, but it is not the way we outsiders see it. To us it is Idealism.” Hawkins told me about following Corot in the fields when he was painting. One day when the master had made a particularly beautiful landscape, with cows browsing in the foreground, Hawkins objected to the fact that Corot had painted in a pond when there was really none in sight. “My cows will be in my picture for a thousand years,” he answered, “and I put in the pond to give them some water.” In 1913, the order for the Panama Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco came along, and in order to free my mind of old ties and get a new point of view, I took a boat to the Barbadoes, before starting my compositions.