s," said Whistler, "that he should have said,' No, it
hasn't."'

It was nearly twenty years after when Glasgow finally bought the
masterpiece. Indeed, Whistler had little market for his works until
1892.

He often found, as he said, "a long face and a short account at the
bank." Complaining to Sidney Starr one day of the sums earned by a
certain eminent "R.A.," while he received little or nothing, Starr
reminded him that R.A.'s painted to please the public and so reaped
their reward.

"I don't think they do," demurred Whistler; "I think they paint as
well as they can."

Of Alma-Tadema's work he observed, "My only objection to Tadema's
pictures is that they are unfinished."

Starr spoke approvingly of the promising work of some of the younger
artists. "They are all tarred with the same brush," said Whistler.
"They are of the schools!" Of one particular rising star Whistler
remarked: "He's clever, but there's something common in everything he
does. So what's the use of it?"

Starr indicated a distinguishing difference between the work of a
certain R.A. and another. "Well," he replied, "it's a nasty
difference."

* * * * *

M.H. Spielmann, the art-critic, spoke of "Ten o'Clock " as "smart but
misleading." Whistler retorted, "If the lecture had not seemed
misleading to him, it surely would not have been worth uttering at
all!"

* * * * *

Walter Sickert, then a pupil of Whistler's, praised Lord Leighton's
"Harvest Moon" in an article on the Manchester Art Treasure
Exhibition. Whistler telegraphed him at Hampstead:

"The Harvest Moon rises at Hampstead and the cocks of Chelsea crow!"

* * * * *

Apropos of his spats with Sickert he remarked, "Yes, we are always
forgiving Walter."

Another pupil, foreseeing the end of Whistler as president of the
Royal Society of British Artists, resigned some months before the
time. "The early rat," said Whistler, grimly, "the first to leave the
sinking ship."

* * * * *

In the Fine Art Society's gallery one day he spoke to a knighted R.A.
"Who was that?" Starr asked.

"Really, now, I forget," was the reply. "But whoever it was it's some
one of no importance, you know, no importance whatever."

* * * * *

At an exhibition of Dor