r of
arbitration. Which is the method he considers best suited to be worked
out practically we were only to learn twelve years later, when, under
his administration, the Treaty of Arbitration, unfortunately not
ratified by the Senate, was signed.

That chapter closed, we turned to more restful subjects than the peace
question. Talking of portrait-painting, I chanced to mention that I
liked to give my sitters some characteristic name, to keep before my
mind as a sort of password, whilst I proceeded with my work. By way of
illustration, I told him of a certain young lady I had been commissioned
to paint. She was very pretty, had a pair of twitting, soul-tormenting
eyes and moisture-sparkling lips. I added, that such arbitrarily coined
adjectives, and a good many more that suggested themselves, helped me
but little towards the composition of my picture. That only came when I
had found my formula; and my young lady, who had all along been waiting
for me to name the happy day of the first sitting, was much pleased when
I started with the motto, "Don't you wish you may get it?" I painted her
peeping out from behind a curtain, holding a lovely red rose in her
hand, which, the rose and the hand, you might or might not be destined
to get.

Mr. Cleveland listened with that interest which every good sitter is
expected to display whilst under treatment, and sympathetically agreed
with me that it was wise not to begin a thing till it was finished.
Then he said, "Have you given me a name, too; and if so, what is it?"

Now that was rather a poser, for I _had_ given him a name, and it at
once struck me that he might not like it. I admitted as much, and
prefacing that he must take one of the two words used in the good sense,
I said that I had labelled him "Solid and Stolid"; the "stolid," I
explained, meaning that he was a man who wasn't going to move unless he
saw good cause why. He seemed to think I wasn't far wrong there. As for
the "solid," that needed no apology. Physically, any weighing machine
would prove his substantial solidity; and intellectually, even a slight
acquaintance with him would show him to be a powerful man.

All this little by-play did not prevent my getting on with my picture;
nor was I much disturbed by the business that occasionally claimed the
President-elect's attention. He took things with characteristic
coolness, and gave his instructions without moving a muscle. Only once
he got up, more freely to indul