best picture I ever painted. And now
they have clothed my golden lion clumsily, awkwardly, and timorously
with a dirty coat of black. My butterfly has gone, the checks and
lines, which I had treated decoratively, have disappeared. Am I not
justified in calling it a piece of gross Vandalism?"

"What course would you have recommended? You had gone; the Board
remained: perhaps it was weather-beaten--what could they do?"

"They should have taken the Board down, sir, taken the Board down, not
dared to destroy my work--taken the Board down, returned it to me, and
got another Board of their own to practise on. Good heavens! You say
to my face it was only a Board. You say they _only_ painted out my
butterfly. It is as if you were condoling with a man who had been
robbed and stripped, and said to him, 'Never mind. It is well it is no
worse. You have escaped easily. Why, you might have had your throat
cut.'"

And Mr. Whistler's Mephistophelian form disappeared into the black of
the night.

_The "Pall Mall" Puzzled_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, April 4, 1889.]

Mr. Whistler begs me to insert the following note exactly as it
stands. I haven't the slightest idea what it means, but here it is
with "_mes compliments_":--

"TO THE INTERVIEWER OF THE _Pall Mall Gazette_:

"Good! very good! Prettily put, as becomes the _Pall Mall_, and yet
you cannot be reproached with being 'too fine for your audience!'

"I wish I _could_ say these things as you do for me, even at the risk
of, at last, being understood. _Mes Compliments!_"

[Illustration]

_Official Bumbledom_

[Sidenote: To the Editor of _The Morning Post_]

Sir--As you have considered Mr. Whistler's letter worthy of
publication, I ask you to complete the publication by inserting this
simple statement of the facts as they occurred. The notice board of
the Royal Society of British Artists bears on a red ground, in letters
of gold, the title of the Society. To this Mr. Whistler, during his
presidency, added with his own hand a decorative device of a lion and
a butterfly. On the eve of our private view it was found that, while
the title of the Society, being in pure gold, remained untarnished,
Mr. Whistler's designs, being executed in spurious metals, had nearly
disappeared, and what little remained of them was of a dirty brown.
The board could not be put up in that state. The lion, however, was
not so badly drawn as to make