him get the calf out of town. When a French
crowd laughs with you you can do anything with them. He had had more fun
bringing home that calf, he told me, than he'd had for weeks, and he's a
wonder at having a good time."

Then followed--much of which was news to me--an account of the painter's
earlier life and successes.

He was born in Paris, August 3, 1873; his father, Ridgway Knight, the
distinguished painter, and his mother, who was Rebecca Morris Webster,
both being Philadelphians. Not only is he, therefore, of true American
descent, but his eight great-grandparents were Americans, dating back
to Thomas Ridgway, who was born in Delaware in 1713. Thus by both the
French and American laws he is an American citizen.

At fourteen he was sent to Chigwell School in England by his father,
to have "art knocked out of him" by the uncongenial surroundings of the
quiet old school where the great William Penn had been taught to read
and write. He left in 1890, having won the Special Classical Prize,
Oxford and Cambridge certificate Prize, besides prizes for carpentering,
gymnasium, running, and "putting the weight."

At home the boy always drew and painted for pleasure, as well as at
school during the half-holidays. Some water-colors made during a holiday
trip in Brittany in 1890 decided his father to allow him to follow art
as a career. He entered Julian's studio, with Jules Lefebvre and Tony
Robert-Fleury as professors in 1891, and studied from the nude during
the five following winters. His principal work was, however, done in the
country at and around Poissy, under the guidance of his father.

His exhibits in the Paris Salon (_artistes Francais_) were twenty-four
oils and water-colors from 1894 to 1906, obtaining an honorable mention
in 1901 with the "Thames at Whitchurch"; a gold medal, third class, in
1905, with "The Torrent"; and a gold medal, second class, in 1906, with
his triptych "The Giant Cities" (New York, Paris, London), which makes
him _hors concours_, with the great distinction of being the first
American landscape painter to get two Salon gold medals in two
consecutive years. He won also a bronze medal in the American section
of the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900 with a water-color, and a gold
medal of honor at Rheims, Cherbourg, Geneva, and Nantes.

His most important pictures are: "The Torrent," 4 1/2 x 6 feet, owned by
the Toledo Art Gallery; "The Abandoned Mill," 4 1/2 x 6 feet; "The
End of the