ollars more than had his share of the Smite-MacHugh
chambers--weighed on him. The dinner which he had given to Smite and
MacHugh had cost about eight dollars over and above the ordinary
expenses of the week. Others of a similar character would cost as much
and more. He would have to take Angela to the theatre occasionally.
There would be the need of furnishing a new studio the following fall,
unless another such windfall as this manifested itself. Although Angela
had equipped herself with a varied and serviceable trousseau, her
clothes would not last forever. Odd necessities began to crop up not
long after they were married, and he began to see that if they lived
with anything like the freedom and care with which he had before he was
married, his income would have to be larger and surer.

The energy which these thoughts provoked was not without result. For one
thing he sent the original of the East Side picture, "Six O'clock" to
the American Academy of Design exhibition--a thing which he might have
done long before but failed to do.

Angela had heard from Eugene that the National Academy of Design was a
forum for the display of art to which the public was invited or admitted
for a charge. To have a picture accepted by this society and hung on the
line was in its way a mark of merit and approval, though Eugene did not
think very highly of it. All the pictures were judged by a jury of
artists which decided whether they should be admitted or rejected, and
if admitted whether they should be given a place of honor or hung in
some inconspicuous position. To be hung "on the line" was to have your
picture placed in the lower tier where the light was excellent and the
public could get a good view of it. Eugene had thought the first two
years he was in New York that he was really not sufficiently experienced
or meritorious, and the previous year he had thought that he would hoard
all that he was doing for his first appearance in some exhibition of his
own, thinking the National Academy commonplace and retrogressive. The
exhibitions he had seen thus far had been full of commonplace,
dead-and-alive stuff, he thought. It was no great honor to be admitted
to such a collection. Now, because MacHugh was trying, and because he
had accumulated nearly enough pictures for exhibition at a private
gallery which he hoped to interest, he was anxious to see what the
standard body of American artists thought of his work. They might reject
him.