wing by Himself

IN THE CHAMPS-ELYSEES, PARIS 235
From the Etching by Joseph Pennell

THE HALF HOUR BEFORE DINNER, PARIS 244
From the Etching by Joseph Pennell

ARISTIDE BRUANT OF THE CABARET DU MIRLITON, PARIS 290
From the Poster by Toulouse-Lautrec

I

DAYS

A WORD TO EXPLAIN

NIGHTS

DAYS

A WORD TO EXPLAIN

I

If I wrote the story of my days during these last thirty years, it would
be the story of hard work. No doubt the work often looked to others
uncommonly like play, but it was work all the same.

From the start it must have struck those who did not understand and
who were interested, or curious enough to spare a thought, that my
principal occupation was to amuse myself. When I was young, in
America the "trip to Europe" was considered the crowning pleasure,
or symbol of pleasure, within the possibility of hope for even those
who were most given to pleasure. In Philadelphia it also stood for
money--not necessarily wealth, but the comfortably assured income
that made existence behind Philadelphia's spacious red brick fronts
the average Philadelphian's right. And it was with this trip that J.
and I began our life together. But misleading as was the impression
made to all whom it did not concern, great satisfaction as it was to
my family, who saw in it the ease and comfort it represented to the
Philadelphian, we ourselves, with the best will in the world, could
imagine it no holiday for us, nor accept it as the symbol of the
correct Philadelphia income. Our pleasure was in the fact of the
many and definite commissions which obliged us to go to Europe to
earn any sort of an income, correct or otherwise--commissions
without which we could have faced neither the trip nor marriage. I
can remember that during the two or three weeks between our wedding
and our sailing we were both kept busy, J. with drawings he had to
finish for the _Century_, and I with the last touches to an article
for the _Atlantic_. And if the days on the boat gave us breathing
space, if not much work, except in preparation, was done, the reason
was that the new commissions commenced only with our landing at
Liverpool.

From the moment of our arrival in England I see in memory my life by day
as one long vista of work. It is mostly a beautiful vista, the more
beautiful, I am ready to admit, because the work I owed the beauty to
forced me to keep my eyes open and my