her the day was cold.

Eugene was so cruel in his indictment of life. He seemed to lay on his
details with bitter lack of consideration. Like a slavedriver lashing a
slave he spared no least shade of his cutting brush. "Thus, and thus and
thus" (he seemed to say) "is it." "What do you think of this? and this?
and this?"

People came and stared. Young society matrons, art dealers, art critics,
the literary element who were interested in art, some musicians, and,
because the newspapers made especial mention of it, quite a number of
those who run wherever they imagine there is something interesting to
see. It was quite a notable two weeks' display. Miriam Finch (though she
never admitted to Eugene that she had seen it--she would not give him
that satisfaction) Norma Whitmore, William McConnell, Louis Deesa, Owen
Overman, Paynter Stone, the whole ruck and rabble of literary and
artistic life, came. There were artists of great ability there whom
Eugene had never seen before. It would have pleased him immensely if he
had chanced to see several of the city's most distinguished social
leaders looking, at one time and another, at his pictures. All his
observers were astonished at his virility, curious as to his
personality, curious as to what motive, or significance, or point of
view it might have. The more eclectically cultured turned to the
newspapers to see what the art critics would say of this--how they would
label it. Because of the force of the work, the dignity and critical
judgment of Kellner and Son, the fact that the public of its own
instinct and volition was interested, most of the criticisms were
favorable. One art publication, connected with and representative of the
conservative tendencies of a great publishing house, denied the merit of
the collection as a whole, ridiculed the artist's insistence on shabby
details as having artistic merit, denied that he could draw accurately,
denied that he was a lover of pure beauty, and accused him of having no
higher ideal than that of desire to shock the current mass by painting
brutal things brutally.

"Mr. Witla," wrote this critic, "would no doubt be flattered if he were
referred to as an American Millet. The brutal exaggeration of that
painter's art would probably testify to him of his own merit. He is
mistaken. The great Frenchman was a lover of humanity, a reformer in
spirit, a master of drawing and composition. There was nothing of this
cheap desire to startle and