It is difficult to believe now that for many years in the last century Whistler's work was opposed with rancour, or bitterly derided. Now the world salutes his memory as that of a master; then he was called a coxcomb, a charlatan, an impostor, excepting by "the rare Few" who had rid themselves of the blighting ignorances of the many. There were many pigmies who, because they walked on stilts, were thought to be giants in those days. Their stilts warped, or broke long ago, their lights have dimmed with the passing years, or their names are remembered merely as having been targets for Whistler's wit. Had he not "killed" these men, their existence would have been forgotten. As I have said already, it was not Whistler the fighter, nor Whistler the "airy-incomprehensible" whom I saw most frequently in Carlyle Mansions, but Whistler the neighbour. I do not remember that any one has ever written of him in that character. He used to drop in on dreary, rainy evenings when, he said, "the world depressed" him, or when some happy stroke of fortune had gratified him. Or he would come on moonlit nights and gaze from my high windows where the views of Thames were quite remarkable, and drop his fighting mood, his satire, his butterfly attributes. I had called him "the butterfly with the sting." The phrase pleased him. "Yes, there you have me," he said. {166} But he would drop the sting, and the monocle, and the air of the sprite, and would be quite human, almost "One of the serious of this Earth." One night he came jubilantly, and no sooner had he lost himself in a grandfather's chair by the fireplace, than he said, with a kind of moan: "He's gone!" "Who's gone?" I asked. "My old friend Thomas Carlyle. He lived with me many a year, and I sold him to-day for a base thousand pounds." This with a touch of sadness, permitting the monocle to drop into his right hand, and gazing reflectively at the fire. Then, with a sudden turn towards me: "The Mun-eeee-ci-pal Corrrrporration o' Glasgie has purchased it for its Arrt Museum." The monocle was thrust to the eye again where it seemed to flash the question, "What do you think of that?" I thought very well of it, and said something to the effect that it was a wise city which knew enough to buy such a masterpiece. "Surprising, is n't it?" said Whistler, and then he told me that a committee of braw Scots had called at his studio to conduct the negotiations for Glasgow. His mimicry of the baillies I will not try to reproduce here. Type cannot present it. Action, expression, accent, all are lost. It was a delightful imitation, and I shouted with laughter when Whistler mounted the climax of his story: "'But Mr. Wheestler,' said one of the baillies, by way of expostulation over the price I had modestly suggested, 'but Mr. Wheestler, this is a moderrn {167} paainting, an' I ken that moderrn paintings mostly faade.'