My first statue. Honorable mention in Paris Salon of 1888. Grand Gold Medal, Chicago World's Fair. Now in Metropolitan Museum. Symbolizes the folding up of all nature, at twilight.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

REVERTING, now, to the first person pronoun, I will say: It occurred to me that, if the reader has taken the trouble to read thus far, he may do, as I have often done, say to himself: "Who is this writer, anyway; what has he done as an artist?" It is a natural question, because we are prone to inquire what an artist has done in the world besides merely writing a lot of essays for a magazine. To satisfy that nat

ural curiosity I will give a very brief sketch of my life, followed by illustrations of most of my important works. I do this at the risk of being accused of self-advertising. But such a charge falls to the ground in view of the fact that no one during the last thirty years has done more than I have to advertise his fellow sculptors: through the National Sculpture Society, fathered and nursed into strength by me; also through the "Art World" Magazine, which I organized and edited: with the purpose of showing the public what constitutes a great work of art, and also to hold up to the admiration of this country the finest pieces of sculpture, as well as of painting, by American artists.

I was born in the village of Breitenbach, in Alsace, France, on the 22d of May, 1853. My father emigrated and settled in St. Louis, Mo., in the spring of 1855. There I was raised. As a child I loved to carve. My mother was a devout Christian, so was my father.

I was six years old when my mother died, leaving four children who, under the care of servants, merely "grew up, like Topsy." At nine years of age, I dreamed of becoming a marble cutter; at fifteen, I wanted to apprentice myself to a marble tomb-stone maker; but my father, who had now destined me to become a missionary to the heathen, objected, and began to influence me to think of going to Rochester

Theological Seminary. At seventeen, during a "revival," he pictured to me in such glowing words the glories of Heaven, if I became "converted," and the horrors of Hell, if I did not, that I decided to make a strenuous effort to become converted, an effort of nine months, the most energetic of all my life, during which I implored God constantly, and read the Bible through three times, without feeling any "spiritual experience," until, for the third time, I reached the fateful verse, in Matthew xxii., 14: "For many are called but few are chosen." "That means you" I said, "you are not chosen!" I reflected long, and then-closed the Bible, and for twenty years.

I then went to Metaphysics and Philosophy, for some light on the subject of: "Whence we came, why we came, and whither are we going?" After ten years of burning of the midnight oil, in reading, I arrived at Herbert Spencer's point of view: that, while there is a Power back of all phenomena, call it by what name you will, that Power is unknown, inscrutable, and unknowable: and that there is no real conflict between Science and Religion; the conflict being only between the search for Truth, and Dogma. For years after that, I drifted about like a rudderless bark tossed about on an ocean of what seemed a useless life, going from one business to another. Finally, I found myself, found my first love: carving and sculpture.

I was much helped in this by Dr. E. B. Thomas, father of Augustus Thomas, the dramatist, who would have become a famous man had he been born with sufficient vanity to desire Fame, so as to have energized into creative activity his splendid brain. I had loved him as a friend and second father, before I began to chum with his son Augustus, who is four years younger than I am. We had often wrestled together with problems in philosophy. He admired my capacity for raging at hypocrites and charlatans, and my habit of analyzing all dogmas, and my refusal to have more than a "gambler's faith" in anything not demonstrable mathematically. One day he said to me:

Fred, why don't you take up law as a career? You and "Gus" [his son] would make a fine team. You, with your keen analysis, could work up the cases in the office, and "Gus," with his "gift

of gab," could plead them in court. Think it over, and if you decide to do so, I will get you both into the leading law-office in town.

But, at twenty-two, I despised lawyers. So, I side-stepped that ideal. I had already taken up modelling, as a pastime, and was at work on a small sketch, in clay, of Flaxman's Homeric drawing, "Penelope Waiting for Ulysses." When finished I took it to his house to let him see it. He was visibly surprised, thought awhile, and said:

Well, Fred, you astonish me. To be able to do as well as that, without any training whatever, what will you not be able to do, with study and application. I take it all back, what I said about taking up law as a career, and advise you, now, to take up sculpture, by all means. For, as for me, I would rather be the author of Michael Angelo's "Moses" than President of the United States.

This so fired my imagination, that it was the turning point in my life. For it offered me the only ideal that appeared to me worthy of the devotion of a lifetime of struggle. And, shortly after, I entered the night-class in Washington University Art School in St. Louis, and soon joined the St. Louis "Sketch Club," among whose members were Halsey C. Ives, Museum Director; John H. Fry, painter; Howard Kretschmar, sculptor; Carl Gutherz, Paul Harney, J. R. Meeker, George S. Snell, W. H. Howe, A. B. Green, and J. M. Tracy, painters; Augustus Thomas, dramatist, etc. Some of these made a name for themselves, some slumped and faded away.

I finally decided to give up business and to go to Paris to study. This was in 1882. I went via England, stopping two months in London and spending ten days at Saltash, near Plymouth, with my old friend George S. Snell, who formerly lived in St. Louis, where he, with Augustus Thomas and myself, was one of the "Three Guardsmen," as we called ourselves. He had developed into an artist of great promise and had a studio in Paris. We went to Paris together. Later, Snell settled in New York, but, unfortunately, died during an operation in a hospital. What he failed to do for the honor of his family, his brother, Henry B. Snell, accomplished. He has now been admitted to the walls of the Metropolitan Museum, with a beautiful picture of "Lake Como." I went to Paris with a very modest ambition. It was my