anger to show cause why he should be allowed to
pass the hotel mustard or butter.

All that, I must admit, applies, as far as I know, only to the few
cities I visited; I had much too good a time in each of them, painting
and lecturing, studying and learning, to go away in a hurry; so I cannot
speak of the boys on the ranches or the girls in California; nor can I
say whether the fifty or sixty odd millions of Americans to whom I was
not introduced would have taken kindly to me or I to them, had we met.

My first visit to the United States was not the mere excursion I had
expected it to be. I remained six months, mostly in New York. First I
made myself a temporary studio at the Park Avenue Hotel, but soon
finding that I wanted more easel and elbow-room, I took a flat and a
studio in "The Chelsea," furnished and decorated it _right-away_, and
settled down to a winter's work. When the spring came, I just locked my
door, told the clerk in the office to set the burglar alarm, and went
off to the other Chelsea, my home in London. So, for three years, I
divided my time pretty equally between the two countries.

I look back with pleasure to many an incident connected with the
portraits I painted in America. So, too, to my experiences on the
platform. Not only was I allowed to lecture, but I was even listened
to. To be sure, my lectures were only announced as "Studio-talks," and I
took care they should be very much varied according to my audiences. The
inexhaustible subject of Art had to be presented in one way when
addressing the students in Philadelphia or Chicago, in another when
speaking to the select circle of the Thursday Evening Club in New York.
Considerations that would be appropriate to put before a large gathering
of beautiful and gifted young ladies at one of their great colleges,
were not the same that would appeal to upwards of a thousand Negroes and
Indians, students at the famous Hampton Schools in Virginia. In each
case, however, I illustrated my lecture by painting a life-size head
from nature, my subject being mostly selected from the audience.

I cannot refrain from mentioning one instance of the warmth with which
my efforts were occasionally rewarded. "Thanks!" said one of the
gentlemen officially connected with the Hampton Schools, at the close of
my lecture, "a thousand thanks! You cannot realise what pleasure you
have given to those young men and women.--Understood it? I should think
so. Why, I can assu