etter_

Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially
informing me that the Committee award me a second-class gold medal.

Pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to the
gentlemen of the Committee, and my complete appreciation of the
second-hand compliment paid me.

And I have, Sir,
The honour to be
Your most humble, obedient servant,

J. MCNEILL WHISTLER.

[Illustration]

TO THE 1ST SECRETARY,
CENTRAL COMMITTEE,
INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, MUNICH.

_The Home of Taste_

_The Ideas of Mr. Blankety Blank on House Decoration_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1888.]

The other day I happened to call on Mr. Blank,--Japanese Blank, you
know, whose house is in far Fulham. The garden door flew open at my
summons, and my eye was at once confronted with a house, the hue of
whose face reminded me of a Venetian palazzo, for it was of a subdued
pink.... If the exterior was Venetian, however, the interior was a
compound of Blank and Japan. Attracted by the curiously pretty hall, I
begged the artist to explain this--the newest style of house
decoration.

I need not say that Blank, being a man of an _original_ turn of mind,
with the decorative bump strongly developed, holds what are at present
peculiar views upon wall papers, room tones, and so on. The day is
dark and gloomy, yet once within the halls of Blank there is sweetness
and light.

You must look through the open door into a luminous little chamber
covered with a soft wash of lemon yellow.

From the antechamber we passed through the open door into a large
drawing-room, of the same soft lemon-yellow hue. The blinds were down,
the fog reigned without, and yet you would have thought that the sun
was in the room.

Here let me pause in my description, and put on record the gist of our
conversation concerning the Home of Taste.

"Now, Mr. Blank, would you tell me how you came to prefer tones to
papers?"

"Here the walls used to be covered with a paper of a sombre green,
which oppressed me and made me sad," said Blank. 'Why cannot I bring
the sun into the house,' I said to myself, 'even in this land of fog
and clouds?' Then I thought of my experiment and invoked the aid of
the British house-painter. He brought his colours and his buckets, and
I stood over him as he mixed his washes.

"One night, when the work was ne