It is but just to add here that Mr. Story says that never, to his knowledge or belief, has a cast been made from the original which he owns. He examined the so-called cast in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, and he was fully satisfied that, like all the other specimens in existence, it is of no value in itself, and was made from a worn-out copy of the bust. The Washington mask here presented is from a photograph taken by Mr. Story in Rome, and from his own copy. The attempt of the sculptor Browere to take a life-mask of Thomas Jefferson was not more successful, and was much more disastrous, than Wright’s attempt upon the face of Washington. Mr. Ben Perley Poore quotes Clark Mills as telling the following story: “The family of the ex-President were opposed to it, but he finally consented, saying that he could not find it in his heart to refuse a man so trifling a favor who had come so far. He was placed on his back on a sofa, one of his hands grasping a chair which stood in front. Not dreaming of any danger, his family could not bear to see him with the plaster over his face, and therefore were not present; and his faithful Burwell was the only person besides the artist in the room. There was some defect in the arrangements made to permit his breathing, and Mr. Jefferson came near suffocating. He was too weak to rise or to relieve himself, and his feeble struggles were unnoticed or unheeded by his Parrhasius. “The sufferer finally bethought himself of the chair on which his hand rested. He raised it as far as he was able, and struck it on the floor. Burwell became conscious of his situation, and sprang furiously forward. The artist shattered his cast in an instant. The family now reached the room, and Browere looked as if he thought their arrival most opportune, for though Burwell was supporting his master in his arms, the fierce glare of the African eye boded danger. Browere was permitted to pick up his fragments of plaster and carry them off, but whether he ever put them together to represent features emaciated with age and debility, and writhing in suffocation, Mills did not know.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The mask of Jefferson in the fragmentary condition described above would be of little value even if it had been preserved. When Houdon came to America in 1785 to make the bust of Washington, he was the companion of Benjamin Franklin, and he was, in all probability, the author of this cast of Franklin’s face, taken in Paris that year as a model for the well-known Houdon bust of Franklin, which it somewhat resembles. The original mask was sold in Paris for ten francs after the death of the artist in 1828.