One might have thought that Gutzon’s quick acquiescence would have ended the “controversy” over the angels. But things seem to have been different in the rarefied atmosphere of the cathedral grounds. Severe trouble was on its way the moment Dr. Peters dropped his letter into the mailbox. Gutzon wasn’t much concerned with the sex of the angels. The model of the Angel Gabriel was still in soft clay. It was a simple matter to remove the offending face and model one with sterner features. Gutzon kept the original face, had it cast in silver and used a photograph of it as a Christmas card. It brought to the Borglum home a signed photograph of Bishop Potter. Everything was sweetness and light until a reporter noticed that Gabriel’s countenance had quit being pretty and amiable and was now a little hard ... and analytical and dour. The discovery pleased him and he made a quick departure for his office. The next morning his story appeared under a headline that didn’t seem to fit it: BORGLUM SMASHES ANGELS IN A HUFF Other newspapers took up the cry and soon the subscribers were filling the press with their personal, and no doubt authoritative, opinions on the intriguing subject: Were angels men or women? Gutzon wasn’t much concerned with this argument. He didn’t think it concerned him. And, save for the fact that the first story had pictured him smashing up things in a rage, he was probably right. It seemed good fun, but twenty years later, during the Stone Mountain disagreement, a reporter dug up the original story to prove that Gutzon’s temper was ungovernable and always had been. The Atlanta _Constitution_, trying to ferret out the truth, telegraphed the cathedral and got a reply from Dr. Peters: “Angels still stand serene in their places where Borglum put them,” he said. “We never had any trouble with the sculptor.” The story of how Borglum smashed the inoffensive angels went on, however, for years and years--and it still goes on. The evil that men do, somehow, never lives as long as some of the evil that they never thought of doing. Borglum, however, did think that destruction might have been a good idea. The last time he heard reports that he had gone berserk in his studio on the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, he sadly shook his head. “I didn’t think of it soon enough,” he said. CHAPTER TEN _PUBLIC MEMORIALS_ It isn’t remarkable that Borglum had virtually all the work he could do in the early 1900s. Nobody in New York seems to have been talking about anyone else. He was no mute and long-suffering artist. He was somebody who knew how to answer back ... and he did ... and the press loved him. Gutzon was not disturbed because many of his commissions came to him through people who knew nothing whatever about sculpture except that it was expensive.