the style of query he used. To all these I admitted that they had become much more easy for me than I had expected, that I was hurrying them up because I knew that they were in a great hurry for the work. I reminded them that my estimate was the lowest that they could obtain in the city and said if I had the faculty of working fast that I ought to be remunerated for it, etc. ‘But,’ said he, ‘there is quite a wide difference between a week and a day and it seems that you did the last one in a day.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘so I did, but I will spend a week at them hereafter.’ This made him laugh heartily, and he drew me a check for $70.00 on the spot and told me that he was glad I was doing them so fast and that the firm were more than pleased, thinking my work far ahead of the original, etc. The fourth stone I finished this Monday having commenced it on Saturday last. It has been taken away this morning; the fifth one is now on my desk ready for me to proceed. It is a beautiful surface to draw upon, and I enjoy the work very much. I certainly have the faculty of drawing very fast. Several artists have seen my drawings on the stone and several lithographers also, and they all tell me frankly (after they have been really convinced that I have drawn one in a day or even two days) that there is not another man in the city that could do it and no one that could do it better. The most reasonable time which the Appletons could find elsewhere was a week and this amongst lithographers who had drawn upon stone all their lives. The printers of my lithographic work say that they never printed neater work in their lives and that my drawings all print very brightly.” It was about these days that he made his first original work, a little composition now treasured and carefully preserved. He wrote about it to his mother: “Week before last I took to Mr. Bunce a little bit of sunset effect in the form of a sketch which I did in fifteen minutes, in India ink and white. Beard admired it ever so much, and just for fun I took it to Bunce as a sort of specimen of ‘original design.’ To my surprise he admired it so much that he gave me a block, and told me to put it on the wood by all means, for the ‘Journal.’ It is very simple in composition, being drawn in a circle with the foreground [Illustration: _The Road to Hide-and-Seek Town_ _First Composition, 1873_]