He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his "blender," unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green, gazed at my leggings, then at the barometer, and again meeting my eye with a look as if he feared I might be a disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of silence between each two syllables, giving to his language all the dignity of an unabridged Webster, "I would take pleasure in stating that my name is Hank G. Smith, artist;" and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a little, and, giving the blender another vigorous twist, added, "I would request yours." Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that my home was on the Hudson, near New York, quickly assumed a familiar me-and-you-old-fel' tone, and rattled on merrily about his winter in New York spent in "going through the Academy,"--a period of deep moment to one who before that painted only wagons for his livelihood. Storing away canvas, stool, and easel in a deserted cabin close by, he rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his lariat, I walked beside Smith down the trail toward Copples's. He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, beginning: "California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon drove him into a painter's career." Then he reverted fondly to New York and his experience there. "Oh, no!" he mused in pleasant irony, "he never spread his napkin over his legs and partook French victuals up to old Delmonico's. 'Twasn't H. G. which took her to the theater." In a sort of stage-aside to me, he added, "_She_ was a _model_! Stood for them sculptors, you know; perfectly virtuous, and built from the ground up." Then, as if words failed him, made an expressive gesture with both hands over his shirt-bosom to indicate the topography of her figure, and, sliding them down sharply against his waistband, he added, "Anatomical torso!" Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, as he conceived me to be, in habit and experience. The long-pent-up emotions and ambitions of his life found ready utterance, and a willing listener. I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically California painter, with special designs for making himself famous as the delineator of mule-trains and ox-wagons; to be, as he expressed it, "the Pacific Slope Bonheur." "There," he said, "is old Eastman Johnson; he's made the riffle on barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears of corn; but it ain't _life_, it ain't got the real git-up. "If you want to see _the_ thing, just look at a Gérôme; his Arab folks and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain't assuming a pleasant expression and looking at spots while their likenesses is took. "H. G. will discount Eastman yet." He avowed his great admiration of Church, which, with a little leaning toward Mr. Gifford, seemed his only hearty approval.