Away up in the top of one of the largest and most populous hotels of the quarter, an American artist has kept “bachelor hall” for a score of years or more. He is an animal-painter, and spends the winter in elaborating his summer’s studies, and in preparing immense canvases for sacrifice before that Juggernaut, the annual Salon. He received once a commission to paint a portrait--a “post-mortem,” as such a commission is usually called--of a deceased black-and-tan terrier. The only data he had to work from were a small American tintype and the tanned skin of the defunct pet. Having been inoculated with the spirit of modern French realism, the artist could not be content with constructing a portrait of the dog out of the materials provided, and went to a dog-fancier and hired an animal as near as could be like the one in the tintype. At the appointed hour the dog was brought to the studio in a covered basket. When the canvas was ready and the palette set, the artist opened the lid of the basket and the animal sprang out and began to run about the room. The artist thought the dog would soon make himself at home, so at first he did not attempt to secure him. But he shortly found that he grew wilder and more excited every moment, and that catching him was no easy matter. After knocking over all the furniture in the room except the heavy easel, he succeeded in cornering him and seized him by the collar. A savage bite through the thumb made him loose his hold, and the rôles of pursuer and pursued immediately changed. The beast flew into a terrible state of rage, snapping and snarling like a mad thing. As there was no safer refuge than the large easel, the artist climbed upon that to escape his infuriated enemy. By the aid of a long mahl-stock he fished up the bell-cord which hung within reach, and pulled it until the concierge came. The owner of the dog was speedily brought, and the siege of the studio was raised. The same artist brought in from the country one autumn a torpid snake, which he kept in a box all through the winter. One morning in spring he was horrified to find the reptile coiled up on the rug beside his bed. He killed it by dropping a heavy color-box on it, without stopping to find out whether it was venomous or not. It is easy to see how my story grew out of these two incidents.