evening
classes, and even at that time a large number of students. The western
soul, to a certain extent, was fired by the wonder of art. There was so
little of it in the life of the people--the fame of those who could
accomplish things in this field and live in a more refined atmosphere
was great. To go to Paris! To be a student in any one of the great
ateliers of that city! Or of Munich or Rome, to know the character of
the artistic treasures of Europe--the life of the Art quarter--that was
something. There was what might have been termed a wild desire in the
breast of many an untutored boy and girl to get out of the ranks of the
commonplace; to assume the character and the habiliments of the artistic
temperament as they were then supposed to be; to have a refined,
semi-languorous, semi-indifferent manner; to live in a studio, to have a
certain freedom in morals and temperament not accorded to the ordinary
person--these were the great things to do and be. Of course, art
composition was a part of this. You were supposed ultimately to paint
great pictures or do noble sculptures, but in the meanwhile you could
and should live the life of the artist. And that was beautiful and
wonderful and free.

Eugene had long had some sense of this. He was aware that there were
studios in Chicago; that certain men were supposed to be doing good
work--he saw it in the papers. There were mentions now and then of
exhibitions, mostly free, which the public attended but sparingly. Once
there was an exhibition of some of the war pictures of Verestchagin, a
great Russian painter who had come West for some purpose. Eugene saw
them one Sunday afternoon, and was enthralled by the magnificence of
their grasp of the elements of battle; the wonder of color; the truth of
character; the dramatic quality; the sense of force and danger and
horror and suffering which was somehow around and in and through
everything that was shown. This man had virility and insight; stupendous
imagination and temperament. Eugene stood and stared, wondering how such
things could be done. Ever afterward the name of Verestchagin was like a
great call to his imagination; that was the kind of an artist to be if
you were going to be one.

Another picture came there once, which appealed to another side of his
nature, although primarily the basis of its appeal was artistic. It was
a great, warm tinted nude by Bouguereau, a French artist who was
startling his day with his dari