ic
who does to-day, that he was as great a master of art criticism as of
art.

What the men who undertook to carry on tradition did for us was to
arrange a good show. They had to, if it meant taking off their coats and
rolling up their sleeves and putting themselves down to it in grim
earnest, for it was the only way they could justify their action and the
existence of their Society, and their choice of a President, the very
name of Meissonier seeming to stand for anything rather than secession
and experiment and revolt. For the first few exhibitions many of the
older men got together small collections of their earlier work that had
not been shown publicly for years, and the new _Salon's_ way of
arranging each man's work in a separate group or panel made it tell with
all the more effect. And then there was the excitement of coming upon
paintings or statues long familiar, but only by reputation or
reproduction. I cannot forget how we thrilled in front of Whistler's
_Rosa Corder_, which we were none of us, except Bob Stevenson, old
enough to have seen when Whistler first exhibited it in London and Paris
to a public unwilling to leave him in any doubt as to its indifference,
how we talked and talked and talked until we had not time that morning
to look at one other painting in the gallery, how it was not the fault
of our articles if everybody did not squander upon it the attention
refused not much more than a decade before. And the younger men of the
moment had to summon up every scrap of individuality they possessed to
be admitted, and not to be admitted meant too much conservatism or too
much independence. And credentials of fine work had to be presented by
the artists from all over the world--Americans, Scandinavians, Dutchmen,
Belgians, Russians, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Spaniards,--who
couldn't believe they had come off if the New _Salon_ did not let them
in, and half the time they hadn't. And with all it was just for the
pride of being there, they were not out for medals, since the New
_Salon_ gave no awards. And altogether there was about as wide a gulf of
principle and performance as could be between the two _Salons_ that are
now separated by not much more than the turnstiles in the one building
that shelters them both.

And sparks of originality gleamed here and there; the passion for
adventure had not flickered out--at every step through the galleries
some subject for the discussion we exulted in stopped u