l ready-made in
your waistcoat pocket."

"No, but by eight thirty-five this evening I will have one for you."

"He can do it, too," said Willy, patting his idol. "That is why he fits
so well into the United States of America."

The men now entered Ritter's real workshop. Here there were pieces very
different in spirit. While the large figures for the Chicago Exposition
showed traces of commercialism, here everything was thoroughly artistic.
A companion piece in clay to the bas-relief in the club-house, a group of
singing girls not yet completed, was standing on a heavy scaffolding. It
showed the same noble qualities that Frederick had observed in the relief
of the singing boys. Had these works been displayed in Germany, they
would undoubtedly have been epoch-making. A bust of an old woman had some
of the traits of Donatello. Everything in the room testified to the
facility with which the youthful master created. There was a long
decorative frieze in clay, putti with goats, dancing fauns, maenads,
Silenus on his donkey, a procession of bacchantic figures celebrating
the vintage and reproducing all the bacchic joyousness, the drunkenness,
of men and women vintagers, as they cut and trod the grapes and drank the
wine. Another uncompleted work in clay was the figure of a middle-aged
Neptune at a fountain, looking with a jolly smile at a huge fish in his
hands. There was a completed plaster cast of St. George, frankly inspired
by its glorious model, the St. George of Donatello in the National Museum
in Florence. In all these works, Ritter had struck a happy medium between
the Greeks and Donatello and created a style fully expressing his own
personality, yet showing permissible dependence upon his predecessors.

The pieces in this room were without exception meant for the country
residence of an American Croesus, who had taken a tremendous fancy to
the young sculptor and his work and jealously tried to keep his creations
from straying into another's possession. He looked upon himself as a
Medici of the nineteenth century. His marble palace in extensive grounds
on Long Island had already swallowed up millions of dollars, though meant
as a residence merely for himself, his wife, and his only daughter. No
one but Ritter was to do the statuary and sculptural decorations for his
house and garden, and he was to have free play. What commissions are
given in America! Were talents as easy to create in "our country" as
dollars, ther