ant ever knocked at his door
without getting a dollar, and some of them got twenty. For several years
Clarkson and I had him on our minds because of this gentle and yielding
disposition until at last we discovered that in one way or another, in
spite of a reckless prodigality, he prospered. The bread which he
cheerfully cast upon these unknown waters, almost always returned
(sometimes from another direction) in loaves at least as large as
biscuits. His fame steadily increased with his charity. I did not
understand the principle of his manner of life then, and I do not now.
By all the laws of my experience he should at this moment be in the
poorhouse, but he isn't--he is rich and honored and loved.

In sculpture he was, at this time a conservative, a worshiper of the
Greek, and it would seem that I became his counter-irritant, for my
demand for "A native art" kept him wholesomely stirred up. One by one as
the years passed he yielded esthetic positions which at first he most
stoutly held. He conceded that the Modern could not be entirely
expressed by the Ancient, that America might sometime grow to the
dignity of having an art of its own, and that in sculpture (as in
painting and architecture) new problems might arise. Even in his own
work (although he professed but one ideal, the Athenian) he came at last
to include the plastic value of the red man, and to find in the
expression of the Sioux or Omaha a certain sorrowful dignity which fell
parallel with his own grave temperament, for, despite his smiling face,
his best work remained somber, almost tragic in spirit.

Henry B. Fuller, who in _The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani_ had shown
himself to be the finest literary craftsman in the West, became (a
little later) a leader in our group and a keen delight to us all. He was
at this time a small, brown-bearded man of thirty-five, whose quick
humor, keen insight and unfailing interest in all things literary made
him a caustic corrective of the bombast to which our local reviewers
were sadly liable. Although a merciless critic of Chicago, he was a
native of the city, and his comment on its life had to be confronted
with such equanimity as our self-elected social hierarchy could assume.

Elusive if not austere with strangers, Henry's laugh (a musical "ha ha")
was often heard among his friends. His face could be impassive not to
say repellent when approached by those in whom he took no interest, and
there were large numbers of hi