A Picture Peddler

I

TRANSCONTINENTAL motor-trips are not unique in themselves. Whatever distinction mine may have possessed was due in great part to ‘the Duchess,’ Bobby, and attending circumstance. To begin with, I was convinced that I could pay for gasoline, food, and incidentals through the sale of oil sketches and pastels made along the way. Incidentally, I was determined to tackle any kind of work for which, as artist, ex-soldier, and vagabond of some experience, I might be fitted. I asked of the Fates only that they afford a good summer’s experience, pleasant adventure, and enough monetary reward to pay expenses. At the outset I borrowed three hundred dollars to pay for a car and a month’s living. If quick returns were not produced the expedition would go on the rocks somewhere in the Middle West, where so many road-shows have met their doom. But this one-man troupe must be a success — if only to vindicate my repeated glowing assertions of its possibilities, by which skeptical friends had been amused but not impressed.

With the borrowed money in my pocket, I chose an encouragingly sunny May day on which to search for a car. The instant I laid eyes on the Duchess I knew she would do. Another type of Ford had been in my mind — a commercial body fashioned after the manner of the ambulance in which I toured France for two years. But the Duchess, though fundamentally nothing but a well-worn touring car, possessed a superstructure at once unique and desirable: a special enclosed top, with glass panels and isinglass windows, which disappeared into the upper reaches after some persuasion, leaving the interior as well ventilated as a roof garden. Why did I call her ‘the Duchess’? Because there is always something humorous about a duchess, and because there was about the car a certain intangible dignity which later took her proudly into the company of the most rudely hilarious.

I drove out into the press of machines on Fifty-third Street feeling decidedly self-complacent, for young painters of my small reputation and with my aversion to present-day commercial potboiling do not often find themselves sole owner of even a three-year-old. No intrigante ever whispered more persuasively of Romantic Adventure at the ear of attentive youth than did her ladyship in mine.

Outfitting any kind of trip, be it only a week-end in the suburbs, is a profound effort to me because of my propensity for taking everything that might possibly be of use in any climate under any conditions. Now for equipment. In the first place, enough clothes were essential to withstand long and arduous days on the restless seat of a Ford; to cope with chill mountain mornings, hot prairie afternoons, and innumerable rainy nights; to meet such an emergency as a speaking engagement before the Women’s Club of Oshkosh or a visit to the home of a cordial millionaire. By heroic manipulation I succeeded in getting everything into two suitcases — everything except a heavy overcoat, a raincoat, and a straw hat. The latter was somewhat of a problem, but was finally placed in a paper bag and pinned to the top of the car. It was proved superfluous in the first thousand miles and was ultimately traded to a newsboy for a Sunday paper.

Next came sleeping accommodations; a culinary department complete enough to handle at least three good meals a day, with an extra set of eating implements for the chance guest; a repair outfit capable of meeting all exigencies not complicated by serious breakage; and a revolver for defense. Condensation began to be imperative. To eliminate a tent I had the back of the front seat cut down the sides and hinged at the bottom so that it would turn over to join with the rear seat in forming a bed, comfortable in inverse proportion to the height of its occupant. Personally I am over six feet. For bedding I got out the old armyblankets and rolled them up inside a ground-sheet.

The cooking and dining appurtenances— an odd assortment of telescoping pans, tin cups, mess kit, and jars of flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and the like — were compactly stored in a pail and a tin tool-box. Out of respect for tradition I put the necessary mechanical accessories, including a tow-rope, under the rear seat where, when the car was well packed, they were as completely inaccessible as they would have been inside the cylinders. A small spade went on the runningboard beside the grill for camp-fire cooking.

More trouble lay ahead in the shape of painting materials. Salted down, they consisted of a suitcase filled to capacity, a folding easel, a folding parasol, a large portfolio, two gold frames (very essential to the selling campaign), and a large amount of prepared wall-board, in lieu of stretchers and canvas. This, I calculated, would take me to Alaska by way of Buenos Aires, if necessary.

All that remained to be considered now were the diversions. A fourth old suitcase took care of a library of one hundred and fifty five-cent books. A place was found for a small phonograph on the running-board. After a heated debate with myself I compromised with one golf club and a dozen balls. I should have preferred a tennis racket, but it is harder to play tennis by yourself. A radio I did not care to have; neither did I take a crossword-puzzle book.

Up to the moment of stepping on the starter, I had planned to go entirely alone. But the inquiring, hopeful expression which animated Bobby, my dog companion of many adventurous wanderings, proved impossible to resist, and I whistled to him and made room beside me on the seat.

A word about Bobby, for he, like all family pets, is no ordinary one. It was in the Vosges Mountains of France in the winter of 1917-18, when my section was resting after a strenuous turn at Verdun, that we first became acquainted. I was a nineteen-year-old buck private, he a three-week-old ball of energized fur. He was given to the section as a mascot and for a year and a half toured the Western Front with us, saw Belgium at the time of the Armistice, and shared our spring vacation in the Army of Occupation. He did not, as a lady once asked me, ‘drag the wounded out of no man’s land,’ but he frolicked through the vicissitudes of camp life with such comic abandon and unfailing spirits that he more than served his turn in keeping up the general morale. I thought him only an exceptionally intelligent mongrel; but when, after our discharge, I took him to dog authorities in Paris, I found he was a wire-haired griffon of good points.

And so it was that the Duchess, Bobby, and I started West.

II

I stopped at the near-by fillingstation for an initial load of gasoline. Here I found the first example of that friendly interest in the motor traveler which I had not expected until I reached the Western auto-camps. The garage man as he pumped the gas looked my conveyance over.

‘You’ve got quite a load there. Going far?’

‘As far as I can push her — California, I hope.’

‘That so? I just drove up from Texas myself. Better drive around that way. That ‘s a pretty heavy load you’ve got there, is n’t it? How many in your outfit? Nobody else? That’s a good-sized load you’ve got. Well, good luck to you.’

I steered my course through dripping, glistening Manhattan, ferried across a Whistler’s Hudson, and, disembarking on the Jersey shore, headed for Philadelphia along the Lincoln Highway. We reached the environs of Philadelphia late in the evening, and I was glad to spend the night with some friends. As yet I had evolved no system which promised any success in making up my bed while it rained, without unloading half the car and getting the contents well soaked. I preferred to practise on a dry night.

I proceeded to tour Philadelphia in search of an egress that did not run to Atlantic City. This outlet-hunting in a large town is a problem unless you are on a marked thoroughfare, and it was with a sigh of relief that I found a surprising sign which announced that San Francisco lay ahead. I was back on the already familiar Lincoln Highway, well designated by redwhite-and-blue poles. This return to an important route with which one has had previous experience is a pleasure akin to renewing friendships.

As soon as the city limits were reached, I gave the Duchess her head and we bowled along merrily through the beautiful emerald valley country in which lie Lancaster and Gettysburg. The skies were smiling again, and the freshly laundered fields and groves were a joy alike to my eyes and to Bobby’s nostrils. Even the Duchess purred her content.

How the fields of Gettysburg should stir the imagination, and how poorly do they do so in their present condition; for a thousand ugly white monuments scattered over too well-kept lawns make it difficult for even a war-time vision to reconstruct in fancy the three great days commemorated. ‘ Better marked topographically and artistically than any other battlefield in the world,’ the Blue Book tells one.

That night I felt in the humor to drive right on to California, and it was well on toward midnight before sleep seemed imperative. Finding no inviting spot on the highway, I turned off on a crossroad. This wound over small rolling hillsides for several miles with no signs of a possible pasture bedroom, a thing not easy to locate in the dead of night with none-too-good headlights. At last a break in the fence on one side was discovered and I drew off the road, not daring to go far into the freshly ploughed field ahead. I unloaded a few layers of cargo, putting the excess under the machine, and made my bed by the light of a young moon, to the throbbing accompaniment of the insect world. Bobby found traces of many exciting animals in the neighborhood and it was with difficulty I persuaded him to turn in beside me.

The night so pleasantly begun was not to be uneventful. Barely had sleep overtaken me when I was startled by a staccato report. It took me some time to think of looking in the right place, for although I had expected trouble with the ancient tires possessed by the Duchess I was not prepared to have them blow out when I merely rolled over in bed. Making ready to renew my slumbers, I discovered the absence of Bobby, who it now appeared was having a hilarious chase after a galloping herd of cows silhouetted at the top of an adjacent hill. By the time I had persuaded Bobby to return to bed, the first cock was calling lustily for more light. His wish was shortly granted, and with the dawn came the farmer, a solemn-faced Swede, who announced from his perch on a harrow that I should have to move from the one entrance to his field.

The tire changed, breakfast accomplished, and Bobby dragged away from the spot where he had been barking for an hour under the fond delusion that he had treed a rabbit, I called a farewell to the ploughman and then steered back to the main highway. Up, over, and down the long Allegheny grades we rolled until well along in the afternoon the suburbs of Pittsburgh unfolded themselves to my view and I stopped to ponder over the beauty of Turtle Creek. Here, in a setting surpassed by only one American city, man has created a unique masterpiece fashioned of steel and smoke. Strangely enough it is the black soot that, descending alike on massed shacks and cottages, towering chimneys and scarred hillsides, has composed them into a gray tone-poem. Little seedling locomotives scurrying around on the floor of the valley engender vast columns of virgin-white smoke to add a colorful accent. The throbbing machinery drones an accompanying chant that finds an echo in my singing heart. It is seldom that Big Business, either by accident or intent, has woven such a spell of enchantment about itself.

I was tempted to try putting my impressions on canvas, in spite of — perhaps because of— the familiar use of the subject by Pennell and Lie. Besides which it was high time I began to think of adding to my hoard. What better place to start than Pittsburgh, where the International Exhibition, then in progress, should have educated people up to the importance of owning pictures — ‘real hand-painted’ ones? So I settled down for an hour to do a sketch to fit the smaller of my two frames, the while I dreamed pleasantly of how some passing motorist would shortly stop to see my study, like it, and offer to buy it for a fabulous sum. But my only audience was a group of young miners homeward bound.

‘Gee,’ said one of them, after watching awhile in silence, ‘if I could do that I would n’t work.’

The painting as complete as I cared to make it, I hunted for and found a near-by auto-camp in which to lie over until the morrow. As I was making preparations for dinner a shiny new Cadillac drew up beside the Duchess, and out of it climbed a family of three, father, mother, and a girl of twelve —all dressed in spotless sport-clothes fit for a country-club verandah. The child immediately became interested in Bobby and we all exchanged greetings. ‘Mother’ had difficulty in suppressing her amusement over my outfit , circling it several times. Meanwhile ‘Father’ watched with keen, absorbed interest my wood-cutting and firebuilding activities. Threatening darkness convinced them that they should begin their own meal, and the preparations for this were even more amusing to me than mine to them. First they unloaded a large straw hamper containing a complete cooking and eating outfit: bright new silverware, aluminum pans, nickel cups in a leather case — everything for an emergency, and all new and apparently unused. Then a large steak, potatoes, and various accessories were unwrapped. But it was the appearance of a Boston Cook Book that incapacitated me for the time being, and it soon was apparent from their remarks that none of them had ever attempted to cook a meal before. I tried to be oblivious to their struggles, but dreaded the thought of what would probably happen to that succulent steak. (I was dining on frankfurters.) Finally they came to an impasse, being entirely at odds over the problem of whether coffee should be cooked twice or only half as long as potatoes. ‘Mother’ finally approached me for advice. My reply must have sounded authoritative, for it was not long before I was installed as chef while the enchanted family stood about and beamed its gratitude. This arrangement was entirely satisfactory to all concerned, even to Bobby, who gorged himself on frankfurters.

After breakfast next morning I brought forth the sketch with an eye to business, but although my wealthy neighbors were politely interested it never occurred to them to offer to buy it. I had been so confident that sales of this kind would be easy that, disappointed on my first attempt, the sketch looked like a white elephant to me, the trip already imperiled.

But the day was too fine to permit of prolonged gloom, so I breezed into Pittsburgh feeling reckless enough to go into a barber shop for a shave. Then, too, I had been told that barbers were gullible souls and could be persuaded to buy almost anything. I set my sketch, with its still glittering gold frame, in a conspicuous place and gave myself contentedly into the barber’s hands. Interest was keen enough, but it was centred more on myself and my dog than on the picture, and when some new calendars showing buxom bathing girls were exhibited my heart sank, and I knew that here was another failure. Had I only thought to bring some lifeclass studies!

Once more I turned the Duchess westward. On the outskirts of town I stopped at a gas station with an almost empty tank. As the attendant drained the hose I had an inspiration. Again the picture was produced.

‘Say, buddy,’ I began airily, ‘I’m a New York artist down here to see the Exhibition. I dashed off a sketch on the other side of town and, although I could take it back to New York and sell it for fifty dollars, it seems as though somebody in Pittsburgh who knows the place ought to own it. What do you say — how much am I offered for it?’

‘Well,’ he drawled back, ‘I’d like it better if it was Tennessee, but I’ll trade you the gasoline even.’

I staggered from the blow, but thought fast.

‘All right, partner, it’s a bargain, though it pains me to do it.’

I drove off much amused, leaving the Southerner dubiously staring at his new possession — wondering, I suppose, if he had been a sucker and what his wife would say.

III

From Pittsburgh I followed my nose toward Cleveland and Chicago. On the transcontinental roads, one passes many so-called ‘hikers,’ some of whom carry large signs on their backs announcing that they are going all the way across. They turn to you with pleading gestures and beguiling smiles, especially when you are in a Ford and alone. Several times, feeling in the mood for a little companionship and hoping to find an interesting personality, I stopped and took one aboard. Bobby never was pleased with these arrangements, for it meant that he had to perch on top of the luggage in the back seat. Each time I tried this experiment of being congenial I had such bad luck in my choice that I usually swore never to do it again.

It happened that I was in for my share of hold-ups. The first occurred during a black midnight hour on a precariously winding road miles from a town. Strange groping branches clutched at the Duchess from the dense mass of trees on either side as if resentful at being disturbed thus late. My mind going back to war memories, I turned off the lights for a moment to find whether or not I could still hold to an invisible pathway. Darkness rushed in on all sides so swiftly as to make the experiment foolhardy. I again switched on the lights. The two beams leaped forward and, pushing farther and farther ahead, illumined the figure of a man standing in the road. His costume was shabby; a cap was pulled low over his eyes. He held up one empty hand, but, when the Duchess showed no intention of even hesitating, the other hand menacingly brought forth an automatic. Thinking spontaneously, — it was all over in a fleeting, breathless moment, — I slipped my own revolver from its holster beside the seat while I applied the pedals as if to stop. Then, coasting up to the man, I suddenly jerked the front wheels in his direction, forcing him to jump back. For the moment his gun was pointing heavenward as he sought to regain balance. I pressed the footthrottle deep. The Duchess leaped past down the highway, roaring defiance, while I discharged my gun through the open window. I took no aim — it was merely a warning, or a small boy’s gesture of bravado. The bandit proved equally anxious to show that his was no glass toy filled with candy, for he sent a bullet winging through the back of the car before we could careen around a sheltering curve to safety.

My second bandit proved to be the traffic policeman of a small town. When I unwittingly disregarded his gesture to stop, he became irate enough to board another car and overtake me at the next corner. I seemed not to help matters by explaining that he looked not a particle like any policeman I had ever seen. He was all for taking me back to the town hall and fining me. But before this could be done Bobby stepped in to save the situation for us. He had been sitting peacefully on the seat beside me. He now rose up for a stretch. The constable took notice of him for the first time and showed unmistakable signs of being a doglover. I jumped at the opening.

‘Of course you never saw one like him before. There are probably not a dozen in the country. Got him in France — war-dog — used for hunting over there.’ Then I got out of the car and, sitting on a convenient park bench, put Bobby through his not inconsiderable repertoire of tricks: counting, saying his prayers, catching food tossed from his nose, recognizing the difference between my imitation of an exploding shell and a dud (squatting for safety for the latter and playing dead for the former), turning around and rolling over, knowing his right from his left, skipping rope with me, and others of similar variety.

We had attracted a good-sized crowd, and the constable, delighted by the performance, exhibited an unexpected sense of humor combined with a commercial talent. After making a little speech he jovially passed the hat,— ‘to buy raw meat for the wardog,’ — collecting two dollars and sixty-five cents, which was then turned over to me. No further mention was made of the threatened trouble. I told the constable I needed just such a business manager as himself, and we parted the best of friends.

I went through Chicago hurriedly — in fact, almost too much so, for my brakes were practically useless and the traffic had been speeded up to a point where it was ‘devil take the hindmost.’ I toured around town considerably and in so doing — it was the first time I had motored in Chicago — I discovered that an early piece of information instilled into me during my grammarschool days was at last to prove invaluable, although I had long considered it more of a memory course than of intrinsic worth. This was my ability to repeat the names of the Presidents of the United States according to their historical order. Its application is in finding a specific Chicago street, for they are named after the same men in the same order. So much for education. But the case in hand also proves how lamentably weak are our present methods of education, for I had not been compelled to learn the Presidents backward as well as forward. As a result I could only be sure of my location when going in one direction.

I crossed Illinois rapidly, knowing that this was my best pavement for many miles to come and being anxious to get into more interesting country. Besides, my funds were getting alarmingly low, how much so I did not realize until I reached the borders of Iowa and counted up. I had not started my intensive selling campaign as yet, for I was reserving it until I reached a Central Iowa town where I had spent some time previously and was not unknown. Then, too, there was a distant cousin there who might be of valuable assistance.

After the accounting, however, it began to look as if I might never reach that place. There was possibly enough money to buy gas and oil for the trip, but the reserve of food was negligible. We halted outside a tiny village, whose name I never discovered. Something had to be done, and one of the Muses, kindly disposed, stopped long enough from the pursuit of Art to help me feed two hungry disciples.

I sauntered into an ex-barroom with an inviting sign over the entrance — ‘Eats.’ Bobby followed with his nose to the wind. I sat down and ordered a sizable meal for myself and the best in the house for my dog. Then, looking the place over, I found what I wanted — a large space on the wall over the bar. I addressed myself to the proprietor.

’I’m an artist from New York, motoring across the country. My specialty is painting decorations on walls. Now you’ve got a place over that bar which just howls for a picture. I’ll paint you one six feet long that will be a knockout — worth anywhere up to two hundred dollars at New York prices. What’s more, I’ll guarantee not to do another one in town, so that you’ll have an exclusive feature.’

‘I’ve got the only place in town,’ he demurred, but he was obviously impressed. ‘How much is this twohundred-dollar picture goin’ to cost?’

‘Twenty-five dollars,’ I hazarded.

He went back to swabbing the floor with only a grunt for reply. I did n’t feel like bickering, so I came down considerably in my next offer.

‘Well, I’m anxious to show you what I can do. I’ll let it go for this meal and a tankful of the gasoline you’ve got out there in your pump.'

‘All right, go ahead. If I like the thing it’s a bargain.’

After I got out my painting materials and he decided I was not a revenue officer, he joined heartily in the proceedings, arranging a light and rigging an impromptu scaffolding. As my success depended upon his liking the picture, I sounded him for a favorite subject. Of my suggestions he seemed to prefer a figure-painting to pure landscape and, as he was an ex-gob, I thought water would be safe for a background. To cinch the deal, I outlined a ‘Venus Rising from the Sea.’ No Zuloaga ever created more interest. I laid it in rapidly with large brushes, using plenty of turpentine, and inside of two hours I had a regular Frank Brangwyn. As it began to be intelligible the proprietor became most enthusiastic. Every now and then he would rush out to the street and return with a fellow townsman, until a good-sized audience had collected. I have always regretted not having been able to paint one of the war posters in front of the New York Public Library, but this coup of mine was the next best thing.

My patron was so pleased with results that he passed out drinks to the crowd, filled up the Duchess (Bobby and I were already complete), gave me a five-dollar bill from the till, and begged me to stay for an impromptu party. I excused myself, saying I had a hard day ahead, and drove off.

IV

Dire necessity urged me to a long final drive to my immediate destination, an attractive town of some twenty thousand inhabitants situated among gently rolling hills on the banks of the Des Moines River. The neighboring countryside promised much pleasant material for my work. Arriving in the early evening, I manœuvred the Duchess, who was footsore, to the home of my cousin. Here a cordial invitation to stay as long as I desired was extended and gratefully accepted — how gratefully he will never know! Still more pleasing was his enthusiastically expressed wish to aid in the selling enterprise. Making no claims to a knowledge of pictures, he was, during the slackness in his own trade, — that of a tinsmith, — ready to bend all his energies toward the sale of my handiwork, good or bad.

The following day, after having procured a little advance advertising in the Daily Bugle, we two conspirators set off in search of some attractive landscapes. These proving plentiful, I selected one on the river bank, and while Bobby romped with some swimming urchins, and the cousin plied me with questions concerning technique, I laid in a swift study of a graceful bridge arching the rampant waters. Having carried this far enough to be intelligible, I moved downstream, accomplishing another before lunchtime. In the afternoon I tried painting the flat prairies outside the town, using a low horizon and attaining picturesqueness by piling up tier on tier of the frisky puffball clouds typical of the region. Of the three canvases I much preferred the last, as it seemed more characteristic of the country; but when, a few days later, I began to search for prospective patrons, I found a dozen of the brookside variety could be sold to one of the prairies. ‘Oh, Iowa is n’t really as uninteresting as that, you know. It’s just full of cosy little picnic-places. And see all the hills here in town. You’ve made it look too monotonously level.’ Only an occasional individual seems to feel the unique beauty of the limitless grain-fields, with silos and farmhouses hiding in groves that dwindle and melt into the beckoning blue distances.

At the end, then, of this first day of painting I had produced two small sketches to fit the nine-by-twelve-inch frame, and one to fit the sixteen-bytwenty. Consulting with the cousin, we decided to ask seven dollars and a half for the smaller and fifteen dollars for the larger size, hoping by these modest prices to attract the many people who ordinarily never think of owning anything but a print because they have heard that all originals cost up in the hundreds. At these prices the day’s work should net thirty dollars, and the cousin began to figure final returns on that basis. He even talked of modern efficiency methods applied to painting in order to speed up production, and thereafter, whenever I brought in a canvas with more than one foreground tree, he loudly protested at the use of too much time-absorbing detail. And when he found that the precedent of three a day was not to be lived up to he called it one more proof of the tradition that all painters are loafers.

Once engaged, the cousin proved a heartless manager. He relentlessly insisted on my accepting an invitation to speak before the Business and Professional Women’s Club. This was terrifying. ‘ But think of the advertising,’ reiterated the cousin. ‘ If you land with the ladies, your name will be a household word.’ The outcome was foregone, and I sat up all night to produce a paper that to me was a masterpiece. I read it aloud at breakfast.

‘Very pretty and high-sounding; but what’s it all about?’ the cousin inquired.

My heart sank.

‘It’s an explanation of Art written for the layman.’

‘Well,’ he announced, ‘it means nothing to this tinsmith. What, pray, are “values" and “interesting line” and “good color” and “mood”?’

It was apparent that the paper had failed in the very purpose for which it had been conceived. After some meditation I thought of a possible way out. Instead of telling my audience of what that mysterious thing called Art consists, I would show them! So on the evening of the appointed day I appeared before the assembled ladies garbed in a smock (for atmosphere), and loaded down with painting materials, pictures, and much literature. I read some of my would-be serious paper, made a few random remarks on the development of modern painting, illustrating with reproductions, showed my recent canvases, and finished up by painting a fifteen-minute sketch before their eyes. When I feared interest was lagging I recounted a few anecdotes of the studios. What it lacked in unity and coherence the performance made up by its unexpected turns, and I was gratified by my apparent success in holding the attention of the gathering.

The cousin was enthusiastic about subsequent newspaper notices.

‘That’s a great start — I guess you knocked them for a row of pins that time. Now when you do the same for the Kiwanis Club next Thursday we’ll have the town eating out of our hand.’

‘Kiwanis Club,’ I moaned. ‘What is this game ? ‘

‘Thursday — twelve sharp — at the hotel,’was the unperturbed reply. ‘You will be allowed twenty-five minutes at the close of the luncheon programme. You go on after the Girl Scout orchestra.’

Too weak to argue, I attacked the new problem with what good grace I could muster. Entertaining a roomful of business men, hilarious after a large meal and a general song-fest, is a different matter from seeking to interest the more impressionable other sex. On Thursday at 12.55, when ‘Mr. Robert Alden Reaser, New York artist,’ was introduced, I took the bull by the horns and proceeded to recount a series of personal war-anecdotes. Whenever at a loss for words, — often the case, — I resorted to a rapid crayon sketch to illustrate or point my story. To my immense relief the idea caught on with the crowd. My stage fright vanished, and when the time was up I was so enjoying the fun of working for laughs in true vaudevillian manner that I should have liked to continue indefinitely.

These talks added materially to my growing reputation about town and, as our stock of landscapes had grown, we thought it time to invite some sales. But time flew without results and I began to be nervous. An exhibition downtown seemed to be the best means of arousing interest, but I had no resources with which to back such an enterprise. Quite obviously we could not hope to sell the pictures unless someone could be persuaded to look at them. Accordingly we made out a list of possible victims, piled the Duchess full of canvases, some still wet, and proceeded to tour the town, giving private exhibitions in homes wherever an entrée could be obtained. This method, after all, is the ideal one for placing pictures, for they can be picked out to fill and properly decorate a barren wall-space, which function is their real reason for existence. I wash I could relate all the humor of that house-to-house canvasing. Of the ladies who spent hours trying to choose between two pictures at seven-fifty or one at fifteen dollars, although the cousin attempted to help by pointing out that the larger pictures were three times the area of the smaller ones and only twice the price. Of the individuals who thought the prices too high, or vice versa: ‘ What! Only fifteen dollars! And will everyone in town know that that is all I paid for it?’ And of the sales ruined because husband and wife could not agree on the subject-matter: ‘Well, that’s my choice. You can do anything you like about, it.’

The ultimate results of my sojourn in Iowa were most gratifying — I sold all but three of my forty sketches, and in addition two or three more important works. The most pleasing of these was an order for a good-sized landscape decoration in the new high school. For this a local subject was voted, so that it could be pointed out to possible embryo artists as an example of what might be done with the native scenic material. I selected the favorite panoramic view near town — a fine, sweeping vista including a bend of the river, hilltop groves, vivacious skies, and a stacked cornfield in the foreground. It was pleasant, indeed, to have the opportunity to leave this big canvas in a public building, where to me it will always be a commemoration of the most successful episode, artistically and commercially, of my journey. At last I had eased off the shadow of my debt and was free to ramble where and as I willed, with no further need of potboiling for months to come.

Although business showed no signs of a slump, I now felt compelled to tear myself away. It was the middle of August, and I had the best part of my journey ahead of me. I was told that it was not safe to cross the mountains after the fifteenth of September because of the danger of becoming snow-bound. But sadder even than having to leave a thriving enterprise was the necessity of going on without Bobby. Reports continued to come to me that dogs were not wanted in California and I took no chances. He was put on a train and shipped back home, while the Duchess and I, missing his companionship, shook the dust of Iowa from our treads and prepared to tackle the mud farther west.

V

From Iowa I worked north to Minnesota, then turned westward once more along the Yellowstone Trail. I was totally unprepared from anything I had seen or read to find the wheatfields of the Dakotas so thrilling. An ocean of soft gold and mellow violets, caressed into motion by faint breezes and traversed by majestic shadowships! An ocean more perfect in the quality of its color-harmonies than an Atlantic or Pacific, and saved from mere prettiness by its magnitude. In spite of the bad roads, tire troubles, and a high wind that blew out all my windows, I remember the days spent in crossing these States as some of the pleasantest experienced along the way.

I made friends with the Indians on the Northern reservations and found them more picturesque than I had been led to believe. Although they have succumbed to an extensive use of our hideous male habiliments, they still retain enough love of color and ornament to save them from lapsing into the monotone of the whites. The women have even profited in many cases by a gypsy like use of full, brilliantly dyed skirts and gay kerchiefs, although there are injudicious ones among them who verge on burlesque — such as, for instance, the maiden I encountered who wore an emerald-green silk shirt, pink knickers, and brown shoes and stockings.

It is strange that we have had no really fine paintings of our Indian life. Certainly there is no more picturesque figure-material to be found; yet, in spite of the fact that there is a group of painters who devote their entire time to depicting our aboriginal race, we get nothing but a weakly decorative type of canvas more suited to be used as backgrounds for groups at the Natural History Museum than as genre paintings of artistic importance. I have never, in standing before one of these Indian pictures, been made to feel that the painter had a deeply sincere understanding of or sympathy with his subjects — such as, for instance, one feels on viewing Millet’s peasants, Zorn’s bathers, the aristocrats of a Gainsborough, or the music-hall performers of a Degas.

Of the many States I have traveled through in my search for Beauty, Montana reigns supreme with me — which statement has nearly cost me my life in California. Running, as it does, from the gray plains of sageand rabbit-brush, through verdant rivervalleys bordered by green-swept hills, to those most exquisite examples of mountain loveliness within the confines of Glacier Park— it is a symphony of endless fascinating variations. Nowhere can Yellowstone approximate the ethereal melody of Lake Bowman, toward which I had to urge the complaining Duchess over a fearful road that guards the beauty from the usual asphalt-loving tourist.

My few attempts at mountain scenery were not entirely successful, and I again came to the conclusion that it does not form good painter’s material. Our pigments are too earthy, our techniques not subtle enough to entrap the evanescent moods and intangible loveliness of mountain woodlands and lakes. Perhaps it is just as well not to challenge Nature at her best — she has plenty of commonplace moments with which to vie.

Feeling this, I was content to roam on foot or on horseback over these royal hillsides, or, sitting beneath a giant fir, to lose myself in contemplation of some lake unruffled by my gaze. But this feeling of incompetency was not a justifiable excuse for my inaction, it appeared, for on the few occasions when I dared to wield a brush I disposed of the results, unsatisfying as they were, with surprising ease.

As a grand finale to the pilgrimage across Montana, my path into Idaho led through almost a hundred miles of virgin forest, so superb in height, so grandiose in conception, as to make our Eastern ones seem very puny indeed. I think back upon them now with more pleasure than upon the California redwoods, for the latter are tremendous egoists that have stamped out other forms of vegetation, leaving in place of the rich pattern of tangled undergrowth beloved by all woodsmen only a brown waste as barren as a wellworn campground. The nights I spent beneath those awesome Northern trees, — a full moon picking out their regal old trunks with her light and bathing an occasional snooping bear in a pool of phosphorescence, — those nights will rank with the most spectacular of happy reminiscence.

As September advanced and the threat of snow became more ominous, I pushed on through the Rockies and the Coast Range to the Pacific at Seattle. From there, now following the shore line, now bearing back into the big-timber country for a glimpse of a national park, I drifted southward. For the first time I found my old love, the ocean, disappointing. Though still fascinating in its changing moods, its surging life, and its easily whispered promises, it seemed not so beautiful as I had hitherto found it. The color was often monotonous, often too pretty, and my eyes missed the endlessly

varying mountain shapes over which they had been roving with such infinite pleasure.

Reveling in it all, I gradually worked my way into California, until one fine October day I entered Oakland and crossed by ferry to San Francisco. As the Duchess sputtered merrily over the steep grades in this picturesque American city, I thanked her affectionately for the splendid fashion in which she had accomplished the arduous journey. For, although we spent many more pleasant days together in rambling about California, this was our virtual objective, the attainment of which fulfilled my most sanguine hopes.

I said good-bye to my car somewhere in Los Angeles. Business in the East called and, although the Duchess had been the most faithful of mistresses, there was no way of taking her back with me. Besides which she had a serious internal complication that might at any moment evolve into a death rattle. I drove her to the establishment of a secondhand dealer the day I planned to leave.

‘How much is she worth?' I demanded hopefully.

‘Forty dollars.'

I drove to another place.

‘What will you give me for the outfit?’ T inquired, less hopefully.

‘Forty dollars,’ was the reply.

I decided to try strategy.

‘Bah,’ I said, as I stepped on the starter, ‘I was offered fifty-five down the street.’

‘Wait a minute, partner. She looks like a pretty good Lizzie. I’ll give you sixty.’

‘Sold,’ said I, and, giving the wheel a final affectionate squeeze, I pocketed the money and headed for the station on foot.

VOL. 136 — NO. 4