The bust to the waist was completed in six sittings of about two hours each, and a week later my image was placed in the Rotunda of the Royal Academy, where it smiled on everyone passing the door. “The impersonation of animation was my first impression of you,” said Herbert Hampton, “and that is what I tried to get in the bust.” And he certainly did. In spite of the usual placidity of white clay, the lady looks as if she were speaking. One can know too much. I remember, for instance, Herbert Hampton saying one day to me: “Only the rudiments of anatomy are wanted for sculpture. If one knows too much one is apt to emphasise every muscle, every vein, every sinew, and the result is an anatomical specimen. Simplicity is the greatest charm of art, suggestion its goal. Why! great and wonderful as Michael Angelo was, I almost feel he knew too much anatomy.” Experiences such as this sitting are of the greatest help and value to a writer, and give an insight into sister arts that widen one’s mental horizon and ripen one’s judgment. All workers should leave their own groove and see and know craftsmen in kindred branches of endeavour. Outside interests and hobbies are the worker’s salvation and inspiration. After a bust is modelled it has to be cast in plaster. As a rule, only one cast can be taken, but there are various ways of getting a second, or even a third reproduction. The original clay bust on which the sculptor worked is now so damaged that it is destroyed, the clay often being used again for a fresh subject, and the bundles of wood being utilised for lighting the fire. A young Frenchman once begged me to let him cast a hand and foot for some work he was doing, explaining that, though amongst the artists’ models there were exquisite heads and forms, that class of woman seldom had good hands, and a good foot never. Bad boots doubtless accounted for the latter. He made a pudding of plaster of Paris on a tin tray, and into the cold, clammy stuff my well-vaselined extremity was plunged. In a few minutes the cold, wet mud felt hot, almost burning, and the foot was done; but, oh, the dirty mess and the nastiness of it all. Although England possesses some of the finest marble carvers, much of the work, unfortunately, is sent to Italy to be hewn, and even finished, because labour is cheaper there. Herbert Hampton always employs Englishmen, and does the actual finishing of the marble himself. In that he is a thorough John Bull. It is an extraordinary thing to see how a bust is “mechanically pointed” in a rough block. Three fixed points with needles attached to each can copy the most accurate measurements, which, of course, are purely mechanical, from the original cast. After it is roughly hewn the sculptor begins carving and modelling with chisel and hammer. Thus the process is done in three parts: modelled in clay, pointed in marble, and then carved to its finished state of perfection.