"I have great hopes for this," he wrote. "(Hope is always promise-crammed, isn't it?) You will see that I have called it 'Super-Creation.' It was conceived like a lightning flash but the working out, the compelling cold, hard stone to express clearly what I intended to convey is the result of a dogged grind of nearly three years' incessant toil. Have I succeeded, do you think? Of course you have not seen the original, but the photographs are excellent work, having been taken at various angles and positions and under my supervision. You will observe that the work is--well, nothing short of monumental will express it. And, unless a government or an institution is moved to buy it, I shall probably have to build a house around it! However, I'm not discouraged though I've gone in debt for years to come and mortgaged almost my soul in order to get the wherewithal to complete the work. I suppose this is what you call 'the artistic temperament.' But I simply had to do it--I had to get it out of my system and in doing so I feel that I have lived up to the best that was in me. After all there is some consolation in the thought that one _has_ lived up to one's best instincts. How goes your own work? And your missus? Ask her to write me and tell me without circumlocution what she thinks of my effort, especially the conception on the whole. I should like to have discussed it with her and to have had her opinion in the making. Over here one gets only the one-sided opinion of one's confrères or the unimaginative view-point of a few moneyed Americans who want names (_BIG TYPE_) to fill up the bare wall-spaces.... I should like to ask your wife whether she is pursuing her work in earnest or whether like so many lady _dilettantes_ she is only amusing herself.... How I should like to see you both here this coming summer! Is it not possible? I'll turn over my ménage to you if that is an inducement. Let me hear from you soon and send me the latest picture of the son and heir. "Yours fraternally, "J. G." I had thrilled at the mere suggestion of a trip abroad but relegated the thought to a background of remote probabilities and gave myself up to an eager contemplation of the photographic reproductions of the sculptor's work. Following the numbers indicated on the back of each, I arranged the photographs consecutively across the wall.