rk when we are saddest, Miss Hosmer produced now in her
sorrow her fun-loving "Puck." It represents a child about four years
old seated on a toadstool which breaks beneath him. The left hand
confines a lizard, while the right holds a beetle. The legs are
crossed, and the great toe of the right foot turns up. The whole
is full of merriment. The Crown Princess of Germany, on seeing it,
exclaimed, "Oh, Miss Hosmer, you have such a talent for toes!" Very
true, for this statue, with the several copies made from it, brought
her thirty thousand dollars! The Prince of Wales has a copy, the
Duke of Hamilton also, and it has gone even to Australia and the West
Indies. A companion piece is the "Will-o'-the-wisp."

About this time the lovely sixteen-year-old daughter of Madam
Falconnet died at Rome, and for her monument in the Catholic church
of San Andrea del Fratte, Miss Hosmer produced an exquisite figure
resting upon a sarcophagus. Layard, the explorer of Babylon and
Nineveh, wrote to Madam Falconnet: "I scarcely remember to have seen
a monument which more completely commanded my sympathy and more deeply
interested me. I really know of none, of modern days, which I would
rather have placed over the remains of one who had been dear to me."

Miss Hosmer also modeled a fountain from the story of Hylas. The
lower basin contains dolphins spouting jets, while in the upper basin,
supported by swans, the youth Hylas stands, surrounded by the nymphs
who admire his beauty, and who eventually draw him into the water,
where he is drowned.

Miss Hosmer returned to America in 1857, five years after her
departure. She was still young, twenty-seven, vivacious, hopeful, not
wearied from her hard work, and famous. While here she determined upon
a statue of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and read much concerning her
and her times. She had touched fiction and poetry; now she would
attempt history. She could scarcely have chosen a more heroic or
pathetic subject. The brave leader of a brave people, a skilful
warrior, marching at the head of her troops, now on foot, and now on
horseback, beautiful in face, and cultured in mind, acquainted with
Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Egyptian, finally captured by Aurelian, and
borne through the streets of Rome, adorning his triumphal procession.

After Miss Hosmer's return to Rome, she worked on "Zenobia" with
energy and enthusiasm, as she molded the clay, and then the plaster.
When brought to this country, it awa