I found that my business career did not interfere in any way with my social life in Cincinnati. I was still anxious to be an artist and was painting in my bedroom every night. The city was, even at that time, beginning to be an art center for the Middle West. Nicholas Longworth, grandfather of the husband of Miss Alice Roosevelt, had shown a particular aptitude for making money and a better one for spending it the right way. As a young man he had climbed the hills of the town and, looking from them across the water, decided it would be impossible for the city to extend in but one way. Accordingly, he put his savings into land, always keeping one lap ahead of the spread of population. Caring for beautiful things, he began to encourage the fine arts, and it was at his home that I saw my very first collection of oil paintings. Concord was the home of the steel engraving, and the copies of oils that my father had brought back with him from Europe and hung up in the Old Manse swore at everything else in the house. The Longworth collection was mostly German pictures—by Koeck-Koeck, Meyer von Bremen, and two by Lessing of the life of Huss, the martyr, which were evidently worthless, but so aroused my decorative instinct that I remembered them for years after. Wandering up the main street of Cincinnati one evening, I saw a name plate on a doorway—one I had never heard—and after it the magic word “Artist.” I was thrilled. There was actually some one in this town living and having his being and spending his time painting. I used to pass back and forth before this sign, which was at the bottom of a stairway, like a dentist’s or a photographer’s; and finally, one evening just at dusk, I got the courage to go up. Knocking timidly on the door, I was greeted with loud roars of “Come in.” The dingy room was a holy of holies to me—I had never seen an artist’s studio before. In the far corner was a man in a khaki apron, using the blackest of soft soap to wash what were, in my eyes, enormous brushes. Heretofore, my own experiments in oil painting had been made with the usual small brushes and a tin box used by maiden ladies. The bigness and boldness of this establishment took my breath away. When I got the courage to look about I saw that, besides this big Norse viking with the tumbled hair, there was a sculptor in the corner, modeling—think of the daring!—a figure in the nude! I must have presented a ridiculous figure, for there was a laugh behind my back, and, turning, I saw a woman almost naked, sitting on a stool! They asked me why I had wanted to come in, and I told them I tried to paint, but that I had never seen a studio before. I looked with wonder at the big canvases on the wall, and even then realized that here was a sense of color altogether different from that of the German artists, and that the capacity for brushwork was a marvel—for this painter was none other than Frank Duveneck, who had just returned from Munich.