If any man wishes to find a perfect figure with purely Greek movement, let him go the Barbadoes. The black women walking past his window will give him the sensation of Greek statues in motion. I was not long enough there to see much of the islands, as recovered health and spirits and a great new urge for work drove me home long before I had planned. On going to the steamship office, I found that my return ticket could not be used for more than two months, no berth being free until then, but I resolved to go home, and when I make up my mind to a thing I generally succeed. A steamer came in three days, of course full, and I made a bet with a friend that I could return by it. So, getting my duds together and arranging with a boatman to do just as I told him, I set out for the steamer in the harbor. I chose the hour when most of the officers would be on shore, dining, sent the men up ahead of me with my baggage, to be deposited in a corner of the deck, following it with my return ticket. Then I hid behind a fresh-air funnel. When the ship was well away and the pilot dropped, I emerged, sought the smoking-room and the steward. “When does this room close?” “At midnight.” “Could you make me up a bed there?” tipping him. “It’s against the rules, but I could.” I then sought the purser. A big fight, but I won out, and all during one of the pleasantest voyages I ever made I slept upon a mattress placed upon four chairs in the smoking room. It was the delight of my life to be able to carry out, in the San Francisco work, an idea that I had been mulling over for years—namely, that of doing a large panel with only three pots of color—red, yellow, and blue—and three brushes. Somehow, I felt that this would simplify my work, and I think I was right. The canvases, forty-six feet long, were to be placed high in the open air, and needed a certain boldness of treatment which I meant to acquire, so I made a flesh-color sky, white drapery, pink roses, black hair, etc., all with three colors, crisscross, using red, white, and blue stripes about as wide as my finger, for the entire composition. I was in doubt as to whether I could express form in this way, but found that I could, and there is not a single outline in the two panels. I was, as I have been in many other cases, forbidden to use the nude, the idea being that the Westerners would not stand for it. As usual, I paid no attention to the order and painted a nude female figure nine feet tall, directly facing one, for the Fine Arts. No one seemed to notice it, as I heard no objections raised. As Thomas Dewing says, “Vulgarity is in every human being and will out. With some it shows in their acts or talk, and with some in their work. It would seem wiser to have it come out in some less permanent way than work.”