pon me, I found no better answer to it than, "Well,
just to have a look round--wanted to see the latest thing out in the way
of civilisation."

"But you are a portrait-painter, I understand?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then you have come here to paint portraits?"

"Well--certainly," I hummed and hawed--"in case the opportunity should
present itself--and if I should find that"--but he cut me short (beating
about the bush is not popular in the States).

"How much do you charge?" he asked bluntly, and without the least regard
for the sensitive nature of a British artist, so I had to make a plunge
and tell him; so much for head-size and so much for a three-quarter
canvas.

"All right," he said, and was off.

Later on I painted him, and he was ever a good friend to me.

It took me some time to get accustomed to the outspoken ways of the
American. With us the artist is a privileged being, unlike any other
producer or vendor, but there everybody takes it for granted that he is
quite ready to accept dollars in exchange for his work. The waiter in
the cafe, the artist who shampooed me, or the clerk in the hotel, wanted
to know my charges, and it once or twice happened that they turned their
knowledge to good account.

"Now, sir," said a clerk in the Hotel Richelieu, Chicago, where I was
staying, to a wealthy senator, also a guest at the hotel--"now, sir,
this is Mr. Felix Moscheles, the celebrated English artist, and I guess
you had better have your portrait and your wife's portrait painted,
whilst he is here to fix them up." That introduction led to commissions
as acceptable from the artistic point of view as they were remunerative,
and to the most cordial relations between client and artist.

But I am drifting away from New York, where I want to remain for a
while. I had not been there many hours before I went for a ramble on
Broadway (the American walks _on_ the street, not _in_ it, as we do). I
always loved to explore the busy, bustling thoroughfares of a big city;
it is there you can feel the throbbing feverish pulse of an active
community; in the Park or on the Corso you only get that languid
fashionable-doctor sort of pulse, which takes its airing in a landau or
a victoria, a correct and well-regulated pulse that knows its duty to
itself and to the society it is privileged to beat in.

With such predilection for high-pressure and a rattling pace, I soon
found myself making friends with the Broadway. I always had a weakn