In his studies for the Grant competition he had become acquainted with army equipment, and he later began a group of artillery horses with their trappings. Because such externals were bothersome to his composition, he abandoned them and concentrated on horses alone, adding the figure of an Indian for interest. He was familiar with the ways of those expert riders--how a man could decoy horses out of a corral and by riding around and around them until they followed his mount could lead a dash into the open. That was the moment chosen by the sculptor for his group--five wild horses in full gallop. The group was cast in bronze by the Gorham Company and exhibited in their window on Fifth Avenue. Not only because the action of those horses was very lifelike but because the plan was wholly American in both subject and design, it attracted instant attention and was purchased by James Stillman and presented to the Metropolitan Museum. It happened that Sir Purdon Clarke, an Englishman, was director of that institution at the time. For a long time it stood in the entrance hall and was almost the first thing that caught the eye of the visitor. Near it was Rodin’s “Age of Bronze,” a slight figure which was one of Gutzon’s favorites. School children, who were taken on regular tours through the museum, used to vote the horses as their favorite exhibit. The name “Mares of Diomedes” was given to the group by some classical scholar who recalled the story of Hercules and the wild horses of King Diomedes. The sculptor never cared much for the name; it harked back too loudly to outworn mythology. More and more Gutzon’s sense of the bigness of America, of her value to the world, of the importance of her heroes, was growing upon him. He had bought a large block of marble and one day began to carve the head of Abraham Lincoln--his first experiment in colossal sculpture. He worked on it for weeks until it became a perfect likeness of the man, but still he worked while watchers feared that one more stroke of the chisel might ruin the whole work. And then a miracle happened. Suddenly a real character seemed to look out from the carved features. The face became inhabited. A colored woman, whose duty it was to sweep the studio and to whom that huge block of marble had always been a nuisance because she couldn’t push it around, at last raised her eyes from the floor and exclaimed in astonishment: “How’s Mista Bo’glum know ol’ Abe was in dat rock?” The head was taken over to Gorham’s and exhibited in their window. Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, happened along and he also exclaimed in astonishment, “I never expected to see Father again.” Later he wrote that he considered it the best likeness of his father that he had ever seen. Truman Bartlett, who had made a study of all the known portraits of Lincoln, went farther, saying there had not yet been sculptured a head of Lincoln that could compare with it.