n the 'best society,' you
understand, but I know you'll like 'em. Be as good to 'em as you can
without involving anybody. Little Mrs. Haney is a corker. Good start on
a self-made career. They're both unsophisticated in a way, and a little
real sympathy will drag their secret history to the light. Do a sketch
of her for me. She's likely to be famous. Haney is rolling in dough
these days--(miner)--and she's bound for some whooping big thing, I
don't know what, but she's like a country boy with a stirring ambition.
It wouldn't surprise me to see her on Fifth Avenue one of these days.
With these few burning words I commend them into your plastic hands.
Don't let Sammy paint her, for God's sake. Oh yes, I worked 'em for a
couple of canvases. What do you think. In this buoyant climate we all
move. Yours in the velvet."

With such a letter before him Joe Moss awaited his amazing guests with
impatience, cautioning the few who were in the secret not to dodge when
the Captain reached for his pocket-handkerchief. "And, above all, you
are to praise Colorado and condemn the East as a place of residence."
Joe prided himself on his _savoir faire_ and on his apparel, which had
nothing about it to distinguish the sculptor. "In fact," he often said,
"there _are_ people who say I'm not a sculptor. Be that as it may, I
manage by daily care to look like a clerk in a hardware store."

And he did. He customarily wore a suit of pepper and salt, neat and
trig, a "bowler hat" (as they say in London), a ready-made four-in-hand
tie, and a small pearl scarf-pin. "No more fuzzy hair for me, no red
tie, no dandruff," he had said on his return from Paris. "Right here we
melt into the undistinguishable ocean of the millions, unless we can be
distinguished by reason of our sculpture." He always included Julia, his
wife, in this way (although she never "modelled a lick"), for she wrote
all his letters, made out all his checks, and took charge of him
generally. Some said his success was due to her management. She was a
dark-eyed, smiling little woman, exquisite in her dress and brisk in her
manner.

Their studio occupied the whole north side of the attic of a big office
building in the heart of the city's traffic. "We want to be in the midst
of trade, but above it," Moss explained to those who wondered at his
choice of location. "Sculpture, as I see it, is a part of architecture.
I'm not above modelling a door-knocker if they'll only let me do it my
wa