afterwards
declared he was almost glad he had it because some one who pitied the
small invalid sent him a book of Hogarth's engravings. I want you to be
sure and remember about this gentleness and patience, because when he
was older people often accused him of being cross and rude. But at this
time I am sure no one could have been nicer.

James was very careful of his mother, too. One evening she had taken the
boys in a carriage to see a big illumination. Bands were playing and
rockets flying. The horses next their carriage were frightened, and
reared and plunged as if they would hit the Whistler party. James shoved
his mother down on the seat behind him, and standing in front of her,
beat the horses back from them. He always was as polite to her as if she
were the emperor's wife.

The major worked too hard on the great railway and died before James was
fifteen. The emperor was fond of the two boys and wanted them to stay on
in Russia and be trained in the school for pages of the Court. But their
mother said they must grow up in America and hurried back to her own
land. She did not have much money to spend but thought James should go
to West Point to get the military training his father had had. At this
academy he found he did not like to draw maps and forts nearly as well
as he did human figures and faces. Once, when he had been sent to
Washington to draw maps for the Coast Survey, he forgot what he was
about and filled up the nice, white margins with pert little dancing
folks. He was well scolded for this, I can tell you.

James was a tall, handsome young fellow at this time, and liked to go
about to dancing-parties in the evening. He earned very little making
maps and could not afford to buy the real, narrow-tailed coat which was
proper. So he used to take his frock coat that he wore all day and pin
it back to look like a dress coat and start off for big balls, where
nobody was much shocked, because he was always doing droll things and
was so lively that he was welcome in any dress.

In Paris strangers used to ask who the young artist was who had the
snow-white lock among his black curls, for the brown curls had grown as
black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown so tiresome that James had
given up West Point and settled down to painting and etching in Paris.
He had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but
the life of an artist. He worked quite steadily and people began to say:
"I think