young Whistler is going to do great things some day." But
suddenly he packed up and went to London.

In this city he was praised even more, but he did not sell enough
pictures to pay his bills, and once, when he had kept men waiting a long
time for money that he owed them, officers came and took everything away
but his pictures. The room looked so bare and homely that Whistler
painted a very good imitation of furniture round the walls of his room.
So good, in fact, that a rich man who came to look at the pictures sat
down in one of the imitation chairs and found himself on the floor.

It was fortunate that James could go a long time without food, for it
took nearly all he could earn from his pictures to buy paint and canvas
for others. I dare say that quite often when it was said: "James
McNeill Whistler is growing rude and cross," the real truth of the
matter was that James McNeill Whistler was hungry and worried.

However, he began to make money at last, and just as life seemed bright,
an art critic, Mr. John Ruskin, declared that the Whistler pictures,
which were being bought at big prices, were poor--very poor! Mr. Ruskin
spoke, and what was worse, printed his opinion. "I never expected," he
wrote, "to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of
paint in the public's face!" Well, it did not look for a while as if
there was any more good luck in the world for James Whistler. He did not
lose any time in getting a lawyer to sue Mr. Ruskin for spoiling the
sale of his pictures. There was a trial in London, and the court-room
was crowded. Some were there because they already owned Whistler
pictures and wanted to find out if they had paid good money for bad
pictures; others because they were warm friends of the artist or the
critic; but even more men and women went to hear the sharp questions of
the lawyers and the clever answers of Ruskin and Whistler. Whistler won
the case. When the judge awarded one farthing for damages (this is only
a quarter of a cent in our money!), Whistler laughed and hung the
English farthing on his watch-chain for a charm. Mr. Ruskin had to pay
the costs of the trial, which had mounted up to nineteen hundred
dollars. Some of his friends insisted on raising that sum for him. One
of them said it was worth nineteen hundred dollars to have heard the
talk that went on in the court-room.

Later, Mr. Whistler received much more than two hundred guineas for a
single picture. Two famo