“Chicago, dear me, what a wonderful place! I really ought to visit it some day,--for, you know, my grandfather founded the city and my uncle was the last commander of Fort Dearborn.” * * * * * George Washington Whistler, the father of the painter, became an engineer of great reputation, rose to the rank of major, and in 1842 accepted the invitation of Czar Nicholas to superintend the construction of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railroad, and it is said that, with the exception of John Quincy Adams, no American in Russia was held in such high estimation. Major Whistler has been described as a very handsome man; he had rather long curling hair which framed a most agreeable face. “He might have been taken for an artist, rather than for a military engineer. Yet he was, in every sense, a manly man, with most attractive expression and ways.” Whistler’s mother--his father’s second wife--was Anna Mathilda McNeill, a daughter of Dr. C. D. McNeill, of Wilmington, North Carolina. So much for the stock from which Whistler sprang, a line of able men and good fighters. In a roundabout way he must have inherited some of the traits of that “quaint gentleman of rare humor” so frequently mentioned by garrulous Samuel Pepys, who says in one place, “Dr. Whistler told a pretty story.... Their discourse was very fine; and if I should be put out of my office, I do take great content in the liberty I shall be at of frequenting these gentlemen’s company.” * * * * * It is reported that Whistler once stated he was born in St. Petersburg, and he certainly seemed to take delight in mystifying people as to the date and place of his birth,--part of his habitual indifference to the sober requirements of those solemn meta-physical entities Time and Space. One friend has insisted in print upon Baltimore as his birthplace, another upon Stonington, Connecticut. His model once asked him: “Where were you born?” “I never was born, my child; I came from on high.” Quite unabashed, the model retorted: “Now, that shows how easily we deceive ourselves in this world, for I should say you came from below.” The Salon catalogue of 1882 referred to him as “McNeill Whistler, born in the United States.” His aversion to discussing dates, the lapse of years, the time it would take to paint a portrait, or do anything else, amounted to a superstition. For him time did not exist. He did not carry a watch, and no obtrusive clock was to be seen or heard anywhere about him. He did not believe in mechanical devices for nagging and prompting much-goaded humanity. If he were invited to dinner, it was always the better part of wisdom to order the dinner at least a half-hour later than the moment named in the invitation.