As I became acquainted with the masterpieces in the fine arts, I soon became aware that a landscape painter could not draw or paint horses, cattle or sheep; that a cow painter could not paint a convincing landscape equal to his cow painting as a matter of creative production. The same applied to figure painting. I made up my mind that I should master each of these subjects, and I began at once. As I painted and drew almost exclusively in my first twenty years of art work, I drew and painted incessantly dogs, cattle, horses, portraits, figures, and never had to turn to a fellow artist and ask him to draw my figure or cow or horse or sheep. Reflection on this caused me to note that most men, as well as artists, were one-track minded--that the average layman knew nothing of art, nor the place in civilization held by the masters of the fine arts, or even that civilization in its crudest forms was solely the product of the arts, or that the reaching urge in all civilization was the expressed mood of nature, seeking through them an outlet. The reaching, enveloping soul of musical harmonies is the prelude to an understanding of the creative impulse. And again, who is insensible to the tremendous power of words? The marriage of words? The Milky Way of words which language conjures up and creates? Who has not been conscious of the strange beauty of words ancient as Lancelot--of heart, love, soul loneliness, craving and conflict? And as these thoughts grew on me I became aware that the circle of any human group was too small to live deeply within; that all moods of life were something alive in the cosmic in which the creative mind moves in limitless orbit, sensitive to every impression; that the larger the spoken language, the greater, more comprehending became one’s expression. Gutzon, in this period, was no finished sculptor. He did some work with stone and metal--but sporadically--for some three years. He painted tirelessly. He was back at Sierra Madre, and life was placid and pleasant. His friends made much of the Baldwin ranch. Mrs. Frémont had already sent to him there, before he went abroad, young Philip Rollins, who became his lifelong friend. Rollins was much interested in horses and in pictures. He had seen a painting of Gutzon’s in Mrs. Frémont’s possession which he said was worth a thousand Corots. “I have never looked so far into the sky in any painting,” he said. And he brought that admiration into his friendship. In San Francisco Gutzon had a little trouble with the estate of Leland Stanford. Mr. Stanford, during his lifetime, had ordered three pictures from Gutzon, who was then in Paris. One of these was a small canvas priced at $500, accepted and paid for. The others were larger. Stanford accepted them but died before any payment had been made.