The two exceptions, already noted, were some crisp, telling sketches, big and little, in color and black-and-white, the work of the artist members of this coterie, which covered every square inch of the leak-stained surface of ceiling and wall, and the yellow-keyed, battered piano which occupied the centre of the open space and which stood immediately under two flaring gas-jets. At the moment of Fred's and Oliver's arrival the top of this instrument was ornamented by two musically inclined gentlemen, one seated cross-legged like a Turk, voicing the misfortunes of Dog Tray, the other, with his legs resting on a chair, beating time to the melody with a cane. This cane, at short intervals, he brought down upon the shoulders of any ambitious member who attempted to usurp his place. The chief object of the gathering, so far as Oliver's hasty glance could determine, was undoubtedly the making of as much noise as possible. While the young men stood looking into the room waiting for the song to cease prior to Oliver's entry and introduction, Fred whispered hurriedly into his guest's ear some of the names, occupations, and characteristics of the group before him. The cross-legged man with the long neck, drooping mustache, and ropy black hair, was none other than Bowdoin, the artist--the only American who had taken a medal at Munich for landscape, but who was now painting portraits and starving slowly in consequence. He mounted to this eyry every Friday night, so as to be reminded of the good old days at Schwartz's. The short, big-mustached, bald-headed man swinging the cane, was Bianchi--Julius Bianchi--known to the Skylarkers as "The Pole," and to the world at large as an accomplished lithographer and maker of mezzotints. Bianchi was a piece of the early artistic driftwood cast upon our shores--an artist every inch of him--drawing from life, and handling the crayon like a master. The pale-faced young fellow at the piano, with bulging watch-crystal eye-glasses and hair tucked behind his ears, was the well-known, all-round musician, Wenby Simmons--otherwise known as "Pussy Me-ow"--a name associated in some way with the strings of his violin. This virtuoso played in the orchestra at the Winter Garden, and occupied the bedroom next to Fred's. The clean-shaven, well-groomed young Englishman standing behind Simmons and holding a coal-scuttle half full of coal which he shook with deafening jangle to help swell the chorus, was "My Lord Cockburn" so called--an exchange clerk in a banking-house. He occupied the room opposite Fred's.