“I don’t, but I’ll gladly print anything Viellieme will sign. Of course, among the different schools I endeavour to maintain absolute impartiality. I believe in letting every side be heard.” “Well, I’ll do my best.” “Thanks, Haldiman. I’ll be very much obliged to you, and any expense you----” “Oh, don’t mention it. I’m going to Paris anyhow, so there won’t be any extra expense.” ***** The article, marvellously illustrated, appeared in due course. The result quite justified Barney’s expectations and expenditure, and the Barnard Hope boom raged up and down the land. He was interviewed, and photographed, and paragraphed. For a time it was hardly possible to pick up a sixpenny illustrated weekly without seeing the latest photograph of Barney in it, for the young man developed a genius for posing before a camera that would have done credit to our greatest actor. The picture representing him standing with arms folded across his breast, a stern commanding expression upon his countenance, was the one perhaps most sought after by young ladies, although the one in which he looked like Rembrandt was also very popular. Exhibitors begged for his paintings, nabobs bought them, and nobody understood them, which fact made the boom a permanency. Real painters looked at each other in amazement, and asked, “What is this world coming to?”--a question often propounded and never adequately answered. His great fame did not change Barney a particle; he was the same hail-fellow he had always been, and an invitation to his “At Home” became a distinction. America was especially lavish in its purchases of his work, and he was offered fabulous sums to go there and lecture. The adulation he received would have turned the head of almost any man; but it had little effect on him, because he never had the slightest misgiving that his great reputation was entirely undeserved, and he had looked upon himself as the foremost man of the age long before the world had recognized the fact. He received letters from all parts of the country, whose writers, in most gushing phrase, said they had been privileged to look upon his work at such and such an exhibition, and they hoped to live better and nobler lives in consequence. Some of these epistles affected Barney almost to tears, and he read them to his friends, humbly thankful that the gift of bestowing such pleasure, and wielding such an influence for good upon his fellow-creatures, had been granted him. Imitators arose, of course, but they did little to tarnish his reputation; for, as Haldiman had said, there was only one Barney, and it is never given to two men in any one generation to paint as badly as Barney did. Art-critics scored the imitators mercilessly, and were in the habit of saying that if Barnard Hope had not lived such and such a picture would not have been painted,--which statement was probably quite true.